God help us if any considerable force is sent against us, for we can
never help ourselves. Every proper-minded young man is a natural
soldier methinks, even in Anno Domini 1900, but every elderly person
in the same year of grace is quite valueless--that is what we have
already discovered.

And yet even to-day all the senior people in our Legation area--those
who are our guides and mentors--though they be secretly much alarmed,
are comforting themselves with a great deal of garrulous talk because
a letter has arrived from Tientsin--in fact, several letters have
arrived. This is the first reliable news we have had for many days,
and everybody seems now to imagine that we are safe. The chief item in
these fateful missives seems to be that the Roman Catholic Cathedral
at Tientsin has also been burned; that this was accompanied by
massacres of native converts; and that the riverine port is swarming
with Boxers. And there is no news of S----, no news of anything good.
What has become of him we cannot imagine. Yet Ministers, secretaries,
and elderly nondescripts are somewhat relieved, and go about nervously
smiling in a very ridiculous way. No one can quite make out why they
are relieved, excepting perhaps, that they are delighted to find that
the visible world still exists elsewhere, and goes on revolving on its
own axis in spite of our dilemma. Why should the obvious be so often
discovered?

Our poor Legation Guards and their commanding officers, with whom we
were so pleased a fortnight ago, are quite as crushed as everyone
else now--perhaps even more. You see the rank and file are merely a
crowd of uneducated sailors, who have not yet made head or tail of
what all this Peking _bouleversement_ means. They were suddenly
entrained and rushed up to Peking many days ago; they arrived in the