LI HUNG-CHANG.
Li Hung-Chang : his Life and Times. By Mrs. Archibald Little. (Cassell and Co. 15s.)—How little we English understand the Chinese ! This is the one strong conviction that remains with us after perusing this very able study of the great Viceroy's career. Whether or not he was as able and strong a man as most of us thought is still a problem. But Mrs. Archibald Little, who has really written a short history of modern China during Li's lifetime, has made one or two Chinese puzzles clearer. The ablest Chinaman must conduct affairs on the same lines as the mentally incapable, for the fashion has become stereotyped. Therefore the greater the man, the more disappointing he is. Another difficulty which need not puzzle us much longer is this, that there are but two or three Englishmen who have realised that the Chinaman will not conduct affairs face to face, and prefers intermediaries. That is to say, Chinese red-tape is of so binding a nature that ours is but the flimsiest packthread to it; and this is a very coarse comparison indeed. Mrs. Little quotes largely from edicts, letters, and manifestoes of Li and the Imperial Government, also from many other sources, to explain as much as possible the Viceroy's career, particularly the early part of it wherein he and Gordon had dealings with each other. It is a story of extraordinary interest, notwithstanding its many sides and the absolute impossibility of even conjecturing the real forces that sway the frankest of China's men. Li Hung-Chang's corruption is never defended, for his biographer is no lenient judge; but the simpler qualities of the man, his natural affection, his loyalty to friends, are brought out. He had some great
qualities and a great personality, but we cannot affirm that he stood by his country in the Japanese War. Yet even that disaster may have had its uses. The moral of this luminous and able historical biography is that a strong man can rule in China, and, it seems to us, might, if he were honest also, save it as well.
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