……(The Boxers were) a movement of a political nature and not simply a raid for plunder ... Their first object was mutual defense and that defense was mainly directed against what was considered to be foreign aggression: such a purpose and such an organisation in any other country would be styled patriotic……we cannot say we had no warning……the rising had a fixed object, the checking or destruction of aggressive foreigners, and with a simple enemy, foreign aggression of various kinds, which carried with it justification in the eyes of the government and won for it sympathy among the people……
……For 50 years or so we had been lecturing the government, telling it that it must prove strong, must create an army and navy, must introduce foreign drill, must adopt foreign weapons, must prepare to hold its own against all sides, and certain firms did a very profitable trade in arms and ships ... Missionaries were at work in the interior and converts offended their countrymen, first by entering foreign religious societies, second by refusing as Christians to take part in village festivals and third by getting missionaries to support them against local officials in matters of litigation……
……hoping that I might be of use to the Customs Service, to China and to general interests……Is China to be reformed from within or must reform come from without? ... that has been the Far Eastern question of the last half century and will continue to interest thinkers through most of the one we now enter on……(The Chinese People was) looking forward to live its own life without foreign interference or intrusion - that race is at last awake and its every member is tingling with Chinese feeling - "China for the Chinese and out with the foreigner!" The Boxer movement began as, and is, a purely patriotic volunteer movement: it has taken hold of the popular imagination and will spread all over the country……(it's aim is) to destroy Christian converts and stamp out Christianity and to free China from a foreign cult, and on the whole not to hurt or kill but to terrify foreigners, frighten them out of the country and thus free China from the intrusion of aliens - and this is the object which will be kept in view, worked up to and in all probability accomplished during the new century.