there can be but little doubt that an exact narrative from the pen of an
eye-witness who saw everything, and knew exactly what was going on from
day to day, and even from hour to hour, in the diplomatic world of the
Chinese capital during the deplorable times when the dread Boxer
movement overcast everything so much that even in England the South
African War was temporarily forgotten, is of intense human interest,
showing most clearly as it does, perhaps for the first time in realistic
fashion, the extraordinary _bouleversement_ which overcame everyone; the
unpreparedness and the panic when there was really ample warning; the
rivalry of the warring Legations even when they were almost _in
extremis_, and the curious course of the whole seige itself owing to the
division of counsels among the Chinese--this last a state of affairs
which alone saved everyone from a shameful death. In the second place,
this account may dispel many false ideas which still obtain in Europe
and America regarding the position of various Powers in China--ideas
based on data which have long been declared of no value by those
competent to judge. In the third place, the vivid and terrible
description of the sack of Peking by the soldiery of Europe, showing the
demoralisation into which all troops fall as soon as the iron hand of
discipline is relaxed, may set finally at rest the mutual recriminations
which have since been levelled publicly and privately. Everybody was
tarred with the same brush. Those arm-chair critics who have been too
prone to state that brutalities no longer mark the course of war may
reconsider their words, and remember that sacking, with all the
accompanying excesses, is still regarded as the divine right of soldiery
unless the provost-marshal's gallows stand ready. In the fourth place,
those who still believe that the representatives assigned to Eastern
countries need only be second-rate men--reserving for Europe the
master-minds--may begin to ask themselves seriously whether the time has
not come when only the most capable and brilliant diplomatic