Page:Tseng Kuo Fan and the Taiping Rebellion.djvu/8

viii ing prejudice against the Manchu Dynasty, which listens to no good about its servants, and the rather preposterous contention that foreigners in the end put down the Rebellion.

The significance of this Revolt in the middle of the nineteenth century is not fairly estimated either by its magnitude or suppression. Other uprisings in Asia have been as widespread and as wasteful; we have to go back to Darius or Harsha to discover one on a similar scale that was as completely crushed by one organizing genius. The discomfiture of the Taiping movement is a significant indication of race character that places the Chinese high in the ranks of civilized nations. After years of disastrous mismanagement by incompetent officials the people were prompted to support the wearisome process of raising a volunteer army and to endure punishment from desperate enemies until they could effect their extermination. Tsêng, the proponent of this, plan, hardly finds his prototype anywhere in modern history. Dr. Hail compares him with Washington, whom he resembled in character. The American hero, however, was rewarded for his great services by becoming head of the state he had led to independence. With Tsêng there was no question of a supreme position as recompense of his exertions. He remained faithful to the empire, and, though the dynasty he had saved proved undeserving in the end, he lives in the hearts of his people as the type of inviolate loyalty, sans peur et sans reproche. To reveal to the world abroad, which has never know him, one such instance of devotion and untarnished honour brings to us a new realization of the potential in Chinese culture.

Yale University.