tures illustrating some were
occasionally to be found. They were all alike consigned to the same
funeral pyre, and thousands of volumes of unascertained, but perhaps
considerable, value were thus lost to the world for ever. As the
bleak, cold winds from the plains swept down the deserted street at
night, and moaned dolorously through the ruined houses, rattling
doors, and flapping paper windows, it lifted these torn book-leaves,
and swirled them round in a fantastic dance of death, until one could
almost imagine one heard the lamentation of the ghosts of their
long-dead authors--priests, hermits, and scholars--mourning over the
ashes of their life-work.

The whole of this campaign is the reverse of flattering to our Western
civilisation. Many of the details of the conduct of the Russian,
French, and German soldiers do not bear publication. But what it
broadly amounts to is the treatment of a venerable civilisation
absolutely foreign to our own as if its members belonged to a low
class of pestiferous beasts whose most desirable fate would be
extermination.

VIII

CERTAIN COMPARISONS

After spending five months with the British forces in the early part
of the war in the Transvaal, and then having an opportunity of
campaigning with the allied forces in China, it was extremely
interesting to make comparisons between them. The greater number of
the troops we employed in China were drawn from the Army of India. As
regards the French forces, they, at all events during the original
march to the relief of the Legations, were drawn from the troops which
were stationed at Tonkin. But the French troops that subsequently
arrived direct from France, as well as the German contingent, may
naturally be taken as average samples of their respective armies. It
is true that outside the siege of Tientsin there was very little
serious fighting. The engagements on the march up were not severe
ones, except that outside the eastern gate of Pekin itself. The action
here, however, was entirely confined to the Japanese. If this campaign
did not afford opportunities of observing the various troops under
severe strain of battle, it made up for it in a way by testing their
qualities, resources, and equipment for campaigning under
exceptionally trying circumstances. The weather during August, when
the march for the relief took place, was exceptionally hot, far
surpassing anything that I experienced in South Africa. The roads,
where there