THE JESUIT'S TALE
461
it took over our church and I was kicked out of your door. That my
missionary work should have begun with the Boxer Rebellion and
ended at the hand of the Communists--was that a mere coincidence?
That is why I was so often in spite of myself fascinated by the teach–
ings of your ancient sages. Could what they said-that the world
evolved only in a circle, that progress was an illusion, that every–
thing would return to where it started-be
all
nonsense? But I be–
lieve I have found
an
answer to such a heresy. Since my life has
been spared this time, perhaps there is still something left for me
to accomplish. Can't I say now that I have been saved so that some
day I can
be
sent back to your mainland and prove to the world
that no frustrations and defeats will ever dishearten the faithful?
"Though I would often associate the Communists with the
Boxers in my thoughts, the latter were a much less formidable enemy.
They were the mob in its crudest form, with no discipline, no organ–
ization, no ideology, no strategy to speak of. They were only the
inept, ignorant, primitive sort of fanatics. Fired with no less intense
a hatred, they, however, had none of the Communists' subtlety and
finesse, restr.aint and precision.
As
their name implies, their only
strength was in their bare fist, while the Communists can either
strike with their fist mailed, or stroke with a velvet paw.
If
they had
anticipated some of the Communists' technique; if, for instance, they
had worshiped Marx and Engels, instead of such story-book figures,
discredited even then by your intellectuals, as the Old Dame of Mount
Li and Sun Wu Kung the Monkey King; if they had evolved an
economic theory and a cadre system; if they had been far-sighted
enough and humble enough to learn from Western technology and
Western science; if things had happened that way, those early fanatics
might have won the day. They might have come to stay and our
church would have been wiped out in China even fifty years ago. At
least after what has lately happened on the Chinese mainland, I
really doubt whether the Communists are not spiritual heirs to the
Boxers. But being what they were, the Boxers alienated everybody's
sympathy before they had achieved anything. They won a number
of hearts among your rabble and bigots, but I wonder whether they
ever won a single pitched battle. When at last they appeared from
the sorghum fields, they were not nearly so dangerous as I had feared.
They wrapped their heads in red bands and those gave them away
