The Imperial Embassy Round the World.


The purpose of these envoys was, first of all, to ask of the nations of
Christendom equal rights, to get removed the odious extra-territoriality
clause in the treaties, to have the right to govern aliens on their
soil, and to regulate their own tariff. Secondarily, its members
went to study the secrets of power and the resources of civilization in
the West, to initiate the liberal education of their women by leaving in
American schools a little company of maidens, to enlarge the system of
education for their own country, and to send abroad with approval others
of their young men who, for a decade past had, in spite of every ban and
obstacle, been furtively leaving the country for study beyond the seas.

In the lands of Christendom, the eyes of ambassadors, ministers,
secretaries and students were opened. They saw themselves as others saw
them. They compared their own land and nation, mediaeval in spirit and
backward in resources, and their people untrained as children, with the
modern power, the restless ambition, the stern purpose, the intense life
of the western nations, with their mighty fleets and armaments, their
inventions and machinery, their economic and social theories and forces,
their provision for the poor, the sick, and the aged, the peerless
family life in the Christian home. They found, further yet, free
churches divorced from politics and independent of the state; that the
leading force of the world was Christianity, that persecution was
barbarous, and that toleration was the law of the future, and largely
the condition of the present. It took but a few whispers over the
telegraphic wire, and the anti-Christian edicts disappeared from public
view like snowflakes melting on the river. The right arm of persecution
was broken.