leading them through their great peril in safety.
If President McKinley had shown a high degree of statesmanship in his dealings with affairs in Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippines, he now showed equal sagacity in dealing wdth the Chinese question. The Chinese government professed to have nothing in common with the Boxer movement, nevertheless the nations of Europe w^ished China to suffer heavily for what had occurred, and for a time it looked as if the whole Chinese Empire must be broken up and divided among the other nations of the world.
"This must not be," said the President. "While we must compel China to do her duty, we must also help her to hold her own." And working along these lines he soon gave the world to understand that the United States did not favor the dismemberment of the Celestial Empire, and so strong was our influence in that direction that in the end the most of the foreign soldiers were withdrawn from China, and the Emperor was asked to settle the difficulty by a money consideration.
