Indiscreet Letters From Peking | Page 2

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
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
remarkable portion of the Boxer year, the entire sack of Peking and the
extraordinary scenes which marked this latter-day Vandalism. A veil
has been habitually drawn over these little-known events, but in the
narrative which follows it is boldly lifted for the first time.
The eye-witness whose account follows was careful to establish with as
much lucidity as possible each phase of existence during five months of
extraordinary interest. Much in these notes has had to be suppressed for

many reasons, and much that remains may create some astonishment.
Yet it is well to remember that "one eye-witness, however dull and
prejudiced, is worth a wilderness of sentimental historians." The
historians are already beginning to arise; these pages may serve as a
corrective to many erroneous ideas. Perhaps some also will allow that
this curious tragedy, swept into Peking and playing madly round the
entrenched European Legations, has intense human interest still. The
vague terror which oppressed everyone before the storm actually burst;
the manner in which the feeble chain of fighting men were locked
round the European lines, and suffered grievously but were
providentially saved from annihilation; the curious way in which
diplomacy made itself felt from time to time only to disappear as the
rude shock of events taking place near Tientsin and the sea were
reflected in Peking; the final coming of the strange relief--all these
points and many others are made in such a manner that everyone
should be able to understand and to believe. The description of the last
act of the upheaval--the complete sack of Peking--shows clearly how
the lust for loot gains all men, and hand in hand invites such terrible
things as wholesale rape and murder.
The eye-witness attempts to account for all that happened; to make real
and living the hoarse roll of musketry, the savage cries of desperadoes
stripped to the waist and glistening in their sweat; to give echo to the
blood-curdling notes of Chinese trumpets; to limn the tall mountains of
flames licking sky high. If there is failure in these efforts, it is due to
the editing.
The summer of 1900 in Peking will ever remain as famous in the
annals of the world's history as the Indian Mutiny; it was something
unique and unparalleled. With the curious movements now at work in
the Far East, it may not be unwise to study