know.
238 JOHN HAY
Convinced that the besieged were still alive, Mr.
Hay now urged Li Hung Chang that the Ministers
be allowed to communicate freely with their gov-
ernments. Li answered that he and the other Vice-
roys had petitioned the Imperial Government either
to do this or to deliver the Ministers, under safe
escort, at Tien-Tsin.
" I told him " (Minister Wu), Hay wrote President
McKinley on July 29, "that we could not consent to
any such arrangement as the latter alternative ; that
if the Chinese Government was able to send them
safely to Tien-Tsin, it was able to put us into free
communication with them; that if the Chinese Gov-
ernment undertook without previous arrangement
to deliver them and failed by any accident, nothing
would convince the foreign Governments that the
Chinese had acted in good faith.
"He [Wu] finally consented to telegraph Li again
to-day. . . . He is greatly perturbed in spirit, but
seems to be acting squarely with us. He admits there
are many things he cannot explain. He does not
attempt to account for the silence of the Legations,
but believes the Ministers, except Ketteler,^ are
alive."
On August 14, Conger cabled Hay: "Do not put
trust in Li Hung Chang. He is an unscrupulous tool
^ The German Minister had been shot by a Chinese assassin.
THE BOXER ORDEAL 239
of the cruel Dowager. There can be no adequate
negotiation with Peking until the high authors of
this great crime have surrendered. Imperial troops
firing on us daily. Our losses 60 killed, 120 wounded.
We have reached half rations horse-flesh. Have food
only for a fortnight. 6 children have died. Many
others sick."
That same day the relief expedition entered Peking
and saved the Legationers.
A week earlier Secretary Hay, on the brink of an
alarming collapse, caused by the intense strain and
by the volume and difficulty of his work for nearly a
year, was forced to take refuge in his summer home
at Newbury, New Hampshire. From his sick-bed he
directed the chief business of the State Department
for several weeks. "I should soon get back to my
usual form," he wrote Senator Fairbanks, "if I
could keep my thoughts away from the thousand
worries of this crazy old world of ours."
When he began to convalesce, he confessed to his
oldest friend, Nicolay: "I did not imagine when I
left Washington, how bad it was. If I had stayed
another day, I should not have got away at all. I
have had two or three slight complications ā the
last and most agreeable is a lumbago which makes
my walk slantendicular, so I don't walk much. . . .
The thing that has aged me and broken me up has
240 JOHN HAY
been the attitude of the minority of the Senate which
brings to nought all the work a State Department
can do. . . . But what is the use of all this buzzing?
You and I cannot make a new Constitution."
Hay might have consoled himself with the thought
that probably to him, more than to any one else,
was due the saving of the Legations. Almost alone
he believed that they were still alive and so spared
no effort to reach them. His trust kept Secretary
Root on the alert, so that when the first telegram
came from Peking, Mr. Root, without a day's delay,
ordered General Chaffee to proceed to China and
command the American relief expedition.
The Boxer upheaval interrupted and made more
difficult Hay's endeavor to preserve the Chinese
Empire. After the Japanese defeated the Chinese in
1894, China lay like a stranded whale, apparently
dead, or dying, and the chief Powers of Europe came,
like fishermen after blubber, and took here a prov-
ince and there a harbor, and were callous to the fact
that their victim was not dead. They not only
seized territory, but forced from the Chinese con-
cessions for mines, railways, commercial privileges,
and spheres of influence. From the time that Hay
became Secretary, he strove to keep intact the polit-
ical integrity of China and to persuade all the Powers
to maintain there the policy of the Open Door.
THE OPEN DOOR 241
As early as March 16, 1899, Hay wrote confiden-
tially to a New York editor, who was anxious for the
protection of American interests : ā ā¢
To Paul Dana
March 16, 1899.
. . . We are, of course, opposed to the dismember-
ment of that Empire, and we do not think that the
public opinion of the United States would justify
this Government in taking part in the great game of
spoliation now going on. At the same time we are
keenly alive to the importance of safeguarding our
great commercial interests in that Empire and our
representatives there have orders to watch closely
everything that may seem calculated to injure us,
and to prevent it by energetic and timely representa-
tions. We declined to support the demand of Italy
for a lodgment there, and at the same time we were
not prepared to assure China that we would join her
in repelling that demand by armed force. We do not
consider our hands tied for future eventualities, but
for the present we think our best policy is one of
vigilant protection of our commercial interests, with-
out formal alliances with other Powers interested.
During the summer the Secretary's instructions
to Mr. Conger bore the same burden. But as the
242 JOHN HAY
European Powers continued making mutual bar-
gains for the partition of the Empire, on September
6, 1899, Mr. Hay finally addressed to London, Ber-
lin, and St. Petersburg his famous note on the Open
Door. He did not originate the phrase, and the fact
of free commercial intercourse with all nations had
existed here and there in Europe during many cen-
turies. But in applying the word to China, Hay
defined a policy which would affect the political not
less than the commercial status of four hundred
millions of Chinese, and of the rest of the world
which had relations with them.
The American circular requested each of the Eu-
ropean Governments to respect the existing treaty
ports and vested interests; to allow the Chinese
tariff to be maintained and be collected in the re-
spective spheres of influence ; and not to discriminate
against other foreigners in port and railroad rates.
The Powers addressed did not reply promptly.
England was the first to accede; the others, which
stated that they sympathized with the principle, re-
frained from formally endorsing it. Mr. Hay, after
sufficient delay, sent word to each that in view of the
favorable replies from the others, he regarded that
Power's acceptance as "final and definitive." And
he subsequently addressed France, Italy, and Japan.
Next to England, Hay regarded Russia as the most
THE OPEN DOOR 243
important party to the agreement. Russia would
sign no paper, but her Foreign Minister, Count
Mouravieff, gave an oral promise to do what France
did. Later, he "flew into a passion" and insisted
upon it that Russia would never bind herself in that
way; that whatever she did she would do alone
and without the concurrence of France. "Still," Hay
adds, "he did say it, he did promise, and he did enter
into just that engagement. It is possible that he did
so thinking that France would not come in, and that
other Powers would not. If now they choose to take
a stand in opposition to the entire civilized world, we
shall then make up our mind what to do about it.
At present I am not bothering much." (To Henry
White, April 2, 1900.)
By what was one of the most adroit strokes of
modern diplomacy. Hay thus accustomed the world
to accept the Open Door as the only decent policy
for it to adopt toward China. Not one of the Govern-
ments concerned wished to agree to it; each saw
more profit to itself in exploiting what it had already
secured and in joining in the scramble for more; but
not one of them, after Hay had declared for the
Open Door, dared openly to oppose the doctrine. It
was as if, in a meeting, he had asked all those who
believed in telling the truth to stand up: the liars
would not have kept their seats.
244 JOHN HAY
Hardly, however, had the world begun to accustom
itself to the ideal of the Open Door, before the Boxer
Rising intervened, and before this was put down
demands for vengeance on the Chinese rose from
many quarters. The German Emperor, whose Min-
ister Ketteler had been shot in Peking, sent out a
"punitive" expedition under Count Waldersee, bid-
ding his soldiers to give no quarter and to comport
themselves so like Huns that for a thousand years to
come no Chinese would dare to look a German in the
face. Other Powers uttered their wrath more guard-
edly; but they all suspected, and probably hoped,
that the new situation would justify them in dismem-
bering China.
To prevent this Hay worked indefatigably. He
sent Mr. W. W. Rockhill ā whom he regarded as
being, next to Mr. Henry White, the best diplomat
in the service ā to China. He made his note of
July 3 the basis of American action. As Russia
occupied Niu-chwang, he sent to her a serious Inquiry,
to which he "received a reply, most positive and
satisfactory, that their occupation was military and
temporary and that our commerical interests should
not in any case be limited or injured. Russia," he
adds, ''has been more outspoken than before in her
adhesion to the Open Door." (September 8, 1900.)
"The approach of the much-prepared Waldersee,"
THE OPEN DOOR 245
wrote one of Hay's colleagues, ''seemed a peril.
There was the danger that after all the Emperor's
windy eloquence he might feel the necessity of kick-
ing up a row to justify the appointment of Waldersee.
I was very glad therefore that the Russians gave us
an opportunity to say that we would stay under a
definite understanding and not otherwise. It begins
to look as if there was some chance for the Open
Door after all."
This was Hay's view also. He wished to hold the
other Powers to their adherence to the Open Door,
and at the same time to avoid the semblance of or-
ganizing an Anti-Russian coalition. To exact from
the Chinese indemnities and the punishment of the
chief culprits appeared to the Secretary the best
sort of retribution; but the Germans went much
further. Indeed, Count Waldersee 's army obeyed
with relish the Kaiser's command and played the
congenial role of Huns in several districts.
"Ever^^thing appeared to be going well until this
promenade of Waldersee's to Tao Ping," Hay
writes on October 16, "which I fear will have very
unfavorable results upon the rest of China. The
Great Viceroys, to secure whose assistance was our
first effort and our success, have been standing by
us splendidly for the last four months. How much
longer they can hold their turbulent populations
246 JOHN HAY
quiet in the face of constant incitements to disturb-
ance which Germany and Russia are giving is hard
to conjecture. . . .
"The success we had in stopping that first pre-
posterous German movement when the whole world
seemed likely to join in it, when the entire press of
the Continent and a great many on this side were in
favor of it, will always be a source of gratification,"
he confides in the same letter to an intimate friend.
"The moment we acted, the rest of the world paused,
and finally came over to our ground ; and the German
Government, which is generally brutal but seldom
silly, recovered its senses, climbed down off its perch,
and presented another proposition which was exactly
in line with our position." (October i6, 1900.)
In spite of his having warded off the worst dan-
ger, the Secretary was both puzzled and somewhat
troubled by the drawing together of England and
Germany, because he feared that they intended, at
the critical moment, to wring other exactions from
China. It came out later, however, that their mutual
purpose was to check Russian aggression in Man-
churia, and that Germany wished to prevent England
from enjoying a monopoly of the Yangtse Valley
trade. Before the end of the year the Powers were
sufficiently agreed among themselves to join in draw-
ing up a note in which they laid their demand be-
THE OPEN DOOR ^ 247
fore the Emperor of China, who perforce yielded to
them.
The negotiations went on for a long time yet : but
this was the culmination of the diplomatic battle, in
which Secretary Hay won the most brilliant triumph
of his career.
Into the intricacies of the efforts to prevent China
from being vivisected after the Boxer troubles, I will
not enter. Hay's part in saving that Empire alive
was greater than that of any other statesman. He
made a magnificent bluff ā which the United States
could not have backed up if it had been called ā
and he won. Two quotations will bring before the
reader the Secretary's state of mind in the autumn
of 1900. First, as to the policy he upheld: ā
"About China, it is the devil's own mess. We
cannot possibly publish all the facts without breaking
off relations with several Powers. We shall have to
do the best we can, and take the consequences, which
will be pretty serious, I do not doubt. 'Give and
take ' ā the axiom of diplomacy to the rest of the
world ā is positively forbidden to us, by both the
Senate and public opinion. We must take what we
can and give nothing ā which greatly narrows our
possibilities.
" I take it, you agree with us that we are to limit
as far as possible our military operations in China,
248 JOHN HAY
to withdraw our troops at the earliest day consistent
with our obligations, and in the final adjustment to
do everything we can for the integrity and reform of
China, and to hold on like grim death to the Open
Door. ..." (September 20, 1900.)
From the next most confidential outpouring to
Mr. Adams, we have Hay's private opinion of the
other nations with whom he had to deal in the
Chinese Imbroglio.
To Henry Adams
November 21, 1900.
. . . What a business this has been in China ! So far
we have got on by being honest and naif ā I do not
clearly see where we are to come the delayed crop-
per? But It will come. At least we are spared the
Infamy of an alliance with Germany. I would rather,
I think, be the dupe of China, than the chum of the
Kaiser. Have you noticed how the world will take
anything nowadays from a German? Biilow said
yesterday in substance ā "We have demanded of
China everything we can think of. If we think of
anything else we will demand that, and be d ā d to
you" ā and not a man in the world kicks.
My heart Is heavy about John Bull. Do you
twig his attitude to Germany? When the Anglo-
German pact came out, I took a day or two to find
THE OPEN DOOR 249
out what it meant. I soon learned from Berlin that
it meant a horrible practical joke on England. From
London I found out what I had suspected, but what
it astounded me, after all, to be assured of ā that
THEY DID NOT KNOw! Germany proposed it, they
saw no harm in it, and signed. When Japan joined
the pact, I asked them why. They said, "We don't
know, only if there is any fun going on, we want to
be in." Cassini is furious ā which may be because
he has not been let into the joke.
Hay's achievement in this Chinese contest gave
him an immense prestige. Throughout the world he
was now looked upon as a statesman honest, dis-
interested, resourceful, and brilliant. His advocacy
of arbitration, which was preached at the first Hague
Peace Conference in 1899, had already singled him
out. The enthusiasm with which he received the
Czar's project of the Hague Conference and the
fervor with which he instructed Mr. Andrew D.
White and the other American delegates to promote
the great objects of the Conference did much to in-
sure its success. For it was indispensable that the
cooperation of the United States, the great nation
not entangled in Europe's feuds, should be secured.
By his work in China Secretary Hay carried out in
practice what he had professed at The Hague.
CHAPTER XXVII
LIGHTS AND SHADOWS
THE question for the American voters to decide
in the presidential election of 1900 was, logi-
cally, Imperialism. Since 1896 Fate had thrust
that issue, with all its adjuncts, to the front. Im-
perialism involved not only constitutional questions,
such as the right of the American Government to
hold protectorates and subject peoples, but also,
what we may consider morally a deeper problem, in
the relation of so-called "superior" to "inferior"
races. Since land -grabbing began, some twenty
years previously, European nations had appropriated
territory in Africa and Asia wherever they could, ir-
respective of the choice of the inhabitants of those
continents. This process of seizure and colonization
was speciously named "taking up the White Man's
Burden." In reality, the White Man was not a phil-
anthropist: he would treat the Black, Yellow, or
Brown Man humanely if it was convenient, but if
the dark-skinned resisted, the White Man would de-
stroy him. Biology, according to the scientific cant
of the day, required no less, in order that the Fittest
might survive.
LIGHTS AND SHADOWS 251
This doctrine seemed simple when appHed to
Bantus or Borneans or Basutos or Burmese, but
what if one of the great European Powers, mad with
the unbridled madness of egomania, should announce
that it was the superior people and that biology re-
quired it to conquer the other civilized nations, to
impose upon them its dominion and its doctrines, or
if they demurred, to exterminate them?
The American people were cunningly prevented
from expressing their verdict on Imperialism, be-
cause Mr. Bryan, again the Democratic nominee,
again raised the bogey of Free Silver. Professing him-
self a champion of peace, he nevertheless was quick
to clutch a colonel's commission when the Spanish
War broke out, with an eye, evidently, to the soldier
vote in the future. So, too, although in some of his
utterances he let it be inferred that he hated Imperi-
alism, he persuaded, if common report can be trusted,
hesitating Senators to vote to ratify the Treaty of
Paris, by which the United States took over the
Philippines.
The Republican nominee was President McKinley.
However opinion might differ as to his policies, there
was general approval of his personal traits. He made
a dignified President. He treated Republicans and
Democrats who came before him with equal courtesy.
He knew how to say no to applicants without offend-
252 JOHN HAY
ing them. Six different Senators might in turn press
a claim of six of their proteges and Mr. McKinley,
without duplicity, would send each Senator away
believing that his man would be appointed; and all
the while the President had settled on another can-
didate. His good intentions, his understanding of
the hearts, and above all of the minds, of average
American citizens, were indubitable. The Republican
Party, having backed him up in all the novel en-
terprises since 1897, could do no less than support
him for a second term. Quite unwillingly, the man-
agers of the party found themselves compelled, by
a cyclone of popular enthusiasm, to submit to the
nomination of Theodore Roosevelt for Vice-Presi-
dent.
Mr. Hay's health did not permit him to return to
Washington until October, 1900, but he watched the
progress of the presidential campaign somewhat anx-
iously, because he believed that the position of the
State Department on international questions might
influence voters against Mr. McKinley. The pub-
lic knew the rebuffs that had been received ā the
failure of the Alaskan negotiations and of the Hay-
Pauncefote Treaty ; it did not know of all of its suc-
cesses, and, as Hay said, it would not be becoming
in him to boast of them, much less to publish them
prematurely.
LIGHTS AND SHADOWS 253
The enemies of the Administration made Anglo-
phobia one of their trump cards.
" No sane man," Hay wrote to a friend abroad,
"can appreciate the stupid and mad malignancy of
our Anglophobia. It is not merely the Yellows, the
Irish, and the Tammany people, ā they are a matter
of course, ā but by far the worst of the lot is the
[New York ], which claims to be supporting
McKinley, and whose furious attacks on the State
Department from time to time scare our own man-
agers out of their five wits. Just now they are hav-
ing all colors of fits over our modus vivendi in Alaska.
That was, as you know, one of the best bargains for
us ever made. I cannot even defend myself by saying
how good the bargain was. I do not want to publish
to the world the details of an engagement some of
whose features are as yet Incomplete, and it is abom-
inable form for a Government to brag of its diplo-
matic success. So I must let the tempest of dust and
foul air blow itself out."
Mr. Hay was In the condition where everything
hostile, however slight, rasped his always sensitive
nature.
To Samuel Mather
September 28, 1900.
I cannot figure Bryan's election, no matter how I
try. The coal strike, which was unquestionably en-
254 JOHN HAY
gineered by , will lose us a big block of votes
ā but they will be mostly in Pennsylvania where we
can best afford it. The Mugwump defection headed
by Olney and Schurz amounts to nothing in the way
of votes at home or in other States. I think the field
is pretty well taken care of ā only Indiana, of the
important, so-called pivotal States, seems doubtful
and Fairbanks thinks we have got it. We have cer-
tainly made great gains west of the Mississippi, and
our losses in the East are not sufficient to lose us any
States except perhaps Maryland. I shall be greatly
deceived if it should turn out otherwise ā and I have
no personal interest at stake. For I have definitely
made up my mind not to continue in office. The
attitude of the Senate makes it impossible for me to
carry out the policies I hoped for when I entered the
Department, and office-holding per se has no attrac-
tion for me. I shall be sorry to part with the Presi-
dent, who has stood nobly by me in everything; but
there will always be 34% of the Senate on the black-
guard side of every question that comes before
them. . . .
October 2, 1900,
The newspapers have been unusually busy invent-
ing lies. They said I was dying; that I was perfectly
well but sulking because the President had turned me
down ; that I was in a deadly quarrel with Root ; that
LIGHTS AND SHADOWS 255
I had at last come back, after extorting from the
President a promise not to meddle again with foreign
affairs. What can be the use or the motive for such
ingenious falsehoods? I do not believe they can in-
fluence a vote for Bryan.
"I think the canvass is going on very satisfactor-
ily," the Secretary wrote Ambassador Porter on
October 2. " Hanna got considerable of a panic early
in the canvass, but I imagine it was nothing but a
money panic, and if, after Bryan's letter of accept-
ance, the men who have money refuse to do anything
in their own defense, they will deserve to be robbed
to the enamel of their teeth." (October 2, 1900.)
To Samuel Mather
October 8, 1900.
Every day increases the chances of a big electoral
majority for McKinley. The attitude of the Staats-
Zeitung in New York will be worth a good many votes
to him, and the tremendous odds of two and a half
to one seem now to be increasing up to three to one.
Of course, the fellows who bet know no more about it
than the others, but there is a sort of brutish instinct
among gamblers which is rarely at fault when the
odds are so great as they are to-day. A letter just
received from Lodge, who has been all over the
256 JOHN HAY
United States stumping, tells me that, although our
majorities in the East, where they were unnecessarily
great, will be reduced, we shall get so many States we
lost in 1896 that the majority in the Electoral Col-
lege will be greater than ever.
October 31, 1900.
This last week of the campaign is getting on every
body's nerves. There is a vague uneasiness among
Republicans, which there is nothing in the elaborate
canvasses of the Committee to account for. I do
not believe defeat to be possible, though it is evident
that this last month of Bryan, roaring out his des-
perate appeals to hate and envy, is having its effect
on the dangerous classes. Nothing so monstrous has
as yet been seen in our history. He starts with the
Solid South where he does not need to spend a post-
age stamp: he has Tammany with its vast vote and
big corruption fund; and every walking delegate in
the country; and of course adds to that all the regular
Democratic vote of the North. We have an awful
handicap to overcome.
As the campaign drew to a close, however, signs of
McKinley's reelection became unmistakable. Among
the Anti-Imperialists there was an ominous lack