Li Hung - Chang. By Professor R. K. Douglas. (Bliss, Sands, and
Foster.) - The recent war between China and Japan, and the still more recent massacres of missionaries, give a special opportuneness to this new volume of the international series of biographies entitled "Public Men of To-day," which are being issued by Messrs. Bliss, Sands, and Foster. Although Li Hung-Chang is neither a Bis- marck nor a Napoleon, and although the humiliation brought upon his country by the defeats it sustained at the hands of the Japanese has permanently injured his reputation he is a man of seventy-three, and is not likely to have many more " chances " in life—he is still the "great Viceroy," and the most notable of Chinese patriots. Professor Douglas has told his story from the beginning to the present time. He does not disguise the Viceroy's weaknesses at an early part of the book when he gives the epic of Gordon and the Ever-Victorious Army, and he virtually en. dorses Sherard Osborne's impression of the man's unscrupulous- ness, more particularly where foreigners are concerned. At the same time, Mr. Douglas does justice to the patience of Li, and the troubles he has had to encounter, especially through the ultra-conservatism of his own countrymen, in which he is besides to a great extent a believer. He also does justice to Li's good qualities. It is odd, and yet touching, to find the "great Viceroy" praying for a month's leave of absence to visit his mother, an old lady of eighty-three, who was seriously—as events turned out fatally—ill, in a memorial which contains this sen- tence :—"A man has a long lifetime, it is said, to spend in his country's service, and but a short term of years in which he can serve his parents ; and now that the illness from which his mother has long been suffering still continues unabated, memo- ralist all night long tosses about in his trouble, and not for a single moment is his mind to rest." And yet such are the peculiarities of the Chinese character, that Professor Douglas has to admit Li to have been "in the closest relationship with men who have been convicted of forgery, of malveratism of funds, of cowardice, and of bold untruthfulness." Mr. Douglas has been hampered by lack of available material in preparing his biography of Li Hung-Chang, but he has certainly made the most of what he has obtained. His monograph, which is clearly and Nigorously written, is an excellent history of China, at least from the political standpoint, during the long period of Li's paramountcy.
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