Yet for many of them such a death was all too merciful. No race on earth is capable of such awful cruelty, such hellish devices of torture, as the Chinese. And the unfortunate missionaries, the luckless wounded soldiers who fell into their hands, experienced treatment before which the worst deviltries of the Red Indian seemed humane. Occasionally some of these fiends were captured by the Allies; often only the instruments, but sometimes the instigators of the terrible outrages on Europeans, the mandarins who had spurred on the maddened Boxers to their worst excesses. For these no fitting punishment could be devised, and a swift death was too kind. But in the latter days of the campaign too many suffered an unmerited fate. The blood heated by the tales of Chinese cruelty at the outbreak of the troubles did not cool rapidly. The murders of the missionaries and civil engineers, of the unhappy European women and children, could not be readily forgotten. The seed sown in those early days of the fanatical outburst bore a bitter fruit. The horrors that war inevitably brings in its train were aggravated by the memory of former treachery and the difficulty of distinguishing between the innocent and the guilty. A very slight alteration of dress sufficed to convert into a harmless peasant the Boxer whose hands were red with the blood of defenceless Europeans, or of Chinese Christians whose mangled bodies had choked the river.

The echoes of a greater struggle at the other side of the globe filled the ears of the world when the defenders of Tientsin were holding fanatical hordes of besiegers at bay. And so, few in Europe realised the deadliness of the fighting around the little town where hundreds of white women and children huddled together in terror of a fate too dreadful for words. The gallant sailors and marines who guarded it knew that on them alone depended the lives and honour of these helpless ones. Day and night they fought a fight, the like of which has scarcely been known since the defenders of the Residency at Lucknow kept the flag flying in similar straits against a not more savage foe. Outmatched in armament, they opposed small, almost out‐of‐date guns to quick‐firing and large‐calibre Krupps of the latest pattern. Outnumbered, stricken by disease, assailed by fierce hordes without and threatened by traitors within, they held their own with a heroism that has never gained the meed of praise it deserved. From the walls of the Chinese city, a few thousand yards away, and from the ample cover across the narrow river, shells rained on the unprotected town, and its streets were swept by close‐range rifle fire. All national rivalries forgotten, Americans, Russians, British, French, Germans, and Japanese fought shoulder to shoulder against a common foe. Admiral Seymour’s heroic column, baffled in its gallant dash on Pekin, and battling savagely against overwhelming numbers, fell slowly back on the beleaguered town. The Hsi‐ku Arsenal, a few miles from Tientsin, barred the way, guarded by a strong and well‐armed force of Imperial soldiers. The desperate sailors nerved themselves for a last supreme effort. Under a terrible fire the British marines, under Major Johnstone, R.M.L.I., flung themselves on the defences and drove out the enemy with the bayonet. Then, utterly exhausted, its ammunition almost spent, the starving column halted in the Arsenal, unable to break through the environing hordes of besiegers who lay between it and Tientsin. A gallant attempt made by two companies of our marines to cut their way through was repulsed with heavy loss. The Chinese made several attempts to retake the Arsenal. A welcome reinforcement of close on two thousand Russian troops from Port Arthur had enabled the besieged garrison of Tientsin to hold out. A relieving force was sent out to bring in the decimated column, utterly prostrated by the incessant fighting. An eye‐witness of their return, Mr. Drummond, Chinese Imperial Customs, who fought with the Tientsin Volunteers throughout the siege, told me that the condition of Seymour’s men was pitiable in the extreme. Worn out and weak, shattered by the terrible trials they had undergone, they had almost to be supported into the town. For sixteen days and nights they had been battling continuously against a well‐armed and enterprising foe. Their provisions had run out, and they had been forced to sustain life on the foul water of the river, which was filled with corpses, and on stray ponies and mules captured by the way. Out of 1,945 men they had 295 casualties. As soon as the sailors and marines of the returned column were somewhat recovered from their exhaustion, the Allied Forces moved out to attack the native city of Tientsin, which was surrounded by a strong and high wall, and defended by over sixty guns, most of them very modern ordnance. Covered by a terrific bombardment from the naval guns, which had come up from the warships at Taku, the little army, 5,000 strong, hurled itself on the doomed city. But so fierce was the Chinese defence that for a day and a night it could barely hold its own. But before sunrise the Japanese sappers blew open the city gate, under a heavy fire. The Allies poured in through the way thus opened to them, and the surviving defenders fled, having lost 5,000 killed and wounded. The Allies themselves, out of a total force of 5,000, had nearly 800 casualties. The enemy’s stronghold captured, the siege of the European settlements was raised after a month of terrible stress.

Between the railway station and the river lies a small stretch of waste ground, a few hundred yards in extent. Here arose the famous “Railway Siding incident.” The Russians claimed it as theirs “by right of conquest,” although it had always been recognised as the property of the railway company. An attempt to construct a siding on it from the station brought matters to a crisis. A Russian guard was promptly mounted on it, and confronted by a detachment of Indian troops under the command of Lieutenant H. E. Rudkin, 20th Bombay Infantry. The situation in which this young subaltern was placed demanded a display of tact and firmness which might well have overtaxed the resources of an older man. But with the self‐reliance which the Indian Army teaches its officers he acquitted himself most creditably in a very trying position. Then ensued a period of anxious suspense when no man knew what the morrow might bring forth. But calm counsels fortunately prevailed. These few yards of waste ground were not judged worth “the bones of a single grenadier,” and the question was taken from the hands of the soldier and entrusted to the diplomat.