THE JESUIT'S TALE
459
the eye and everything was solved. I was shocked but my mind was
at peace-the kind of peace which is said to come only to those
who have discovered the truth.
"I knew almost nothing about the Boxer as an individual; I had
known
him
only as a member of the mob. For the Communists are
not the only mob I have encountered. Fifty years before my arrest–
as you well know, the year was 1900-0ur church in China was
caught in another outburst of mass hatred known as the Boxer re–
bellion. The movement, suppressed at first by the local authorities
but quickly expanded and gone rampant under the patronage of the
Empress Dowager, was aimed at the destruction of us foreigners. The
Boxers would seek and kill not only all the foreigners in China, but
also the Chinese who had anything to do with us, the converts to
the 'foreign religion' as well as traders dealing in foreign goods. When,
twenty-five years later, the kidnapper showed such admiration for
the foreign architecture and foreign-made guns, he had already made
a great advance over the Boxers. For the Boxers would just burn
the foreign building and look with contempt upon firearms, though
gunpowder, I believe, was actually a Chinese contribution to the
civilized world. They would match our guns and rifles with their
swords and spears, or even with their muscles, for it was their belief
that the human body, fortified by faith, could withstand any harm.
So they would just run into the gun fire and meet their death. And
as they fell, so also died their movement.
"But that movement had a special significance for me. I had
just then been assigned to our mission in China as a novice and I
found myself in a land where our work was not welcome. The air
was already tense with hostility and sporadic incidents of violence
occurred almost daily. When telegraph poles were cut down and
railroads destroyed by the mob, it seemed that nothing smacking of
Western civilization would be allowed to remain in the great Empire
of China. I had luckily just slipped in, when China had made up
her mind to close her door with a big bang. But I had to stay, and
my work had to progress. So you can imagine the young novice with
an adventurous bent of mind, fresh in your country, looking out in
those exciting days, gun in hand, from the long narrow window in
the thick stone wall .to watch the movements of the enemy. He was
thrilled by the prospect of literally defending his church as a soldier
