officials--men whose intelligence will help to shape events and not be
led by them, and who will act with iron firmness when the time for such
action comes--should be assigned to such a difficult post as Peking. In
the fifth place, the strange idea, which refuses to be eradicated, that
the Chinese showed themselves in this Peking seige once and for all
incompetent to carry to fruition any military plan, may be somewhat
corrected by the plain and convincing terms in which the eye-witness
describes the manner in which they stayed their hand whenever it could
have slain, and the silent struggle which the Moderates of Chinese
politics must have waged to avert the catastrophe by merely gaining time
and allowing the Desperates to dash themselves to pieces when the
inevitable swing of the pendulum took place. Finally, it will not escape
notice that many remarks borne out all through the narrative tend to
show that British diplomacy in the Far East was at one time at a low
ebb.

Of course the Peking seige has already been amply described in many
volumes and much magazine literature. Dr. Morrison, the famous Peking
correspondent of the _Times_, informs me that he has in his library no
less than forty-three accounts in English alone. The majority of
these, however, are not as complete or enlightening as they might be;
nor has the extraordinarily dramatic nature of the Warning, the Siege,
and the Sack been shown. Thus few people, outside of a small circle in
the Far East, have been able to understand from such accounts what
actually occurred in Peking, or to realise the nature of the fighting
which took place. The two best accounts, Dr. Morrison's own statement
and the French Minister's graphic report-to his government, were both
written rather to fix the principal events immediately after they had
occurred than to attempt to probe beneath the surface, or to deal with
the strictly personal or private side. Nor did they embrace that most