Page:American Diplomacy in the Orient - Foster (1903).djvu/340

 communication protesting against the armed vessels entering into the narrow strait whose passage was guarded by forts. He says: "Our kingdom is placed east of the Eastern sea. Your honored country is located west of the Western ocean. All wind and sands for the extent of 70,000 li. For four thousand years there has been no communication between your country and ours. It may be said that it is Heaven's limitation that has placed us so remote from each other, and earth that has hung us so far apart as to cut us off from each other. … There has formerly been not a particle of ill feeling between us. Why should arms now drag us into mutual resentment? If you ask us to negotiate and carry our friendly relations, then let me ask how can four thousand years' ceremonies, music, literature, and all things, be, without sufficient reason, broken up and cast away? … It would be better early to make out a right course of action and each remain peacefully in his own place. We inform you that you may ponder and be enlightened." Wisely did Mr. Low conclude that further negotiation with such a people, either by diplomacy or the cannon, would be of no avail.

On his return to China the minister felt it his duty to report to the Department of State that the information upon which Secretary Fish had ordered the expedition was entirely without foundation. "I feel bound to say," he wrote, "that the consul-general's informant fabricated, for ulterior and base purposes, the information embodied in the dispatches before referred to. There is no reason to suppose that it contained the least shadow of truth." The President in his annual