23rd June, 1900.

* * * * *

Yesterday the inevitable happened, and only Heaven and the foolishness
of the attacking forces, who are only playing with us, and do not seem
to have settled down to their work, saved us from complete
annihilation. Without a word of explanation, Captain T----, the
Austrian commander, suddenly ordered all the French, Italians and
Austrians to fall back on the British Legation, sending word meanwhile
to the Japanese and the Germans to follow his example. This meant that
the whole vast semicircle to the northeast and the southeast was being
thrown up. The result was that for ten minutes armed men of all
nationalities poured into the British Legation, until every
rifle-bearing effective was standing there, all jabbering in a mass,
and not knowing what it was all about. The Americans, who had
established themselves on the Tartar Wall as the main point in the
western defence, guessed they were not going to be left there cut off
from salvation by a failure to remember their existence; and presently
they, too, ran in, openly swearing at their officers. These American
marines have never quite liked this idea of being planted on the
Tartar Wall; for with that smartness for which their race is
distinguished, they see it is quite on the cards that they are
forgotten up there if a rush occurs while the others are sitting safe
in the main base. And the Americans are not going to be forgotten--we
soon found that out. They are the people of the future.

Depict to yourself, if you can, the blind fear of all the
Plenipotentiaries, of all the missionaries and their lamb-faced