Under Other Circumstances, More
Especially As The Chinese Expedition Was Believed To Be The Superior, A
Hostile Collision Must Have
Ensued, and the war which has so often seemed
near between the Chinese and Japanese would have become an accomplished
Fact; but fortunately the presence of the foreign diplomatists moderated
the ardor of both sides, and a rupture was averted. By a stroke of
judgment the Chinese seized Tai Wang Kun, the father of the young king,
and the leader of the anti-foreign party, and carried him off to Pekin,
where he was kept in imprisonment for some time, until matters had settled
down in his own country. The opening of Corea to the Treaty Powers did not
put an end to the old rivalry of China and Japan in that country, of which
history contains so many examples; and, before the Corean question was
definitely settled, it again became obtrusive. Such evidence as is
obtainable points to the conclusion that Chinese influence was gradually
getting the better of Japanese in the country, and the attack on the
Japanese legation in 1884 was a striking revelation of popular antipathy
or of an elaborate anti-Japanese plot headed by the released Chinese
prisoner, Tai Wang Kun.
At the opposite point of the frontier China was brought face to face with
a danger which threatened to develop into a peril of the first magnitude,
and in meeting which she was undoubtedly hampered by her treaties with the
general body of foreign powers and her own peculiar place in the family of
nations.
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