diplomacy still at our command, and we are officially still on the
friendliest terms with the Chinese Government.

This morning, the 12th, there was another commotion--this time in
Customs Street, as it is called. Three more Boxers, armed with swords
and followed by a crowd of loafers, fearful but curious, ran rapidly
past the Post Office, which faces the Customs Inspectorate, and got
into a small temple a few hundred feet away, where they began their
incantations. It was decided to attack them only with riding-whips, so
as to avoid drawing first blood. But when a party of us arrived, we
could not get into their retreat, as they had barricaded themselves
in. So marines and sailors were requisitioned with axes; after a lot
of exhausting work it was discovered that the birds had flown. This
was another proof that there is treachery among friendly natives, for
without help these Boxers could never have escaped.

And now imagine our excitement and general perturbation. Since the 8th
or 9th, I really forget which date, we have been acting on a more or
less preconcerted plan--that is, as far as our defences are concerned,
as we have been quite cut off from the outer world. The commanders of
the British, American, German, French, Italian, Russian, Austrian and
Japanese detachments have met and conferred--each carefully instructed
by his own Minister just how far he is to acquiesce in his colleagues'
proposals, which is, roughly speaking, not at all. We can have no
effective council of war thus, because there is no commander-in-chief,
and everybody is a claimant to the post. There is first an Austrian
captain of a man-of-war lying off the Taku bar, who was merely up in
Peking on a pleasure trip when he was caught by the storm, but this
has not hindered him taking over command of the Austrian sailors from
the lieutenant who brought them up; and everybody knows that a captain