tumbrils through streets filled with cursing crowds of sansculottes,
with scorn and contempt written on their features, were rather
exceptional people. Things have changed since then, and the so-called
Americanisation of the world has not conduced to gallantry. Fortunate
are we that there is no white man's audience to watch us impassively,
and to witness the effects of this bombshell of an ultimatum which has
come to-day. There is nothing so humiliating as abject fear. Curiously
enough, the women bear it much better than the elder men, who are
openly distraught; and when I say women, I mean all the women, both
those belonging to the Legations and the dozens of missionary women
who have crowded in. Nearly everyone of them is better than the
elderly men; at least, they try and say nothing so as not to add to
the terrible confusion....

But the ultimatum--what is it, and against whom is it so summarily
directed? Briefly the ultimatum is a neat-looking document written on
striped Chinese despatch-paper, and comes from the Tsung-li Yamen, or
office charged with the overseeing of "the outside nations'
affairs"--which are the affairs of Europe. After very briefly
referring to a demand made by the allied admirals for a surrender of
the Taku forts off the muddy bar of the Tientsin River--about which we
know nothing--it goes on to say that as China can no longer protect
the Legations, the Legations will have to protect themselves by
leaving Peking within twenty-four hours, dating from to-day at four
o'clock. That is all. Not another word. Yet in other words this
document means this: that the demand of the admirals must have been
refused; that they would not have made it unless something disastrous
had happened to S---- and to Tientsin; that acts of war have already
been committed, and that it will be no longer a Boxer affair, but a
government affair. This makes our position desperate enough in all