ARD

5th July, 1900.

* * * * *

It depends very much on moments as to whether one has time to laugh or
to cry. The last time I wrote, we were nearly all laughing--when we
had the time; to-day most of us are doing the reverse. Be one ever so
hardened, it is impossible to go to the humble hospital and the little
graveyard of our battered lines without tender feelings welling up,
and perhaps even a silent tear dropping. We have all been to either
one or the other place to-day; our losses are mounting up. In the
hospital alone there are now fifty sorely wounded and tortured men,
groaning and moving this way and that. The bullet and shell wounds
have so far been distinguished for their deadliness, probably because
of the close ranges at which we are fighting. It is a strange
assembly, in all truth, to be mustered within the precincts of a
diplomatic Chancery, wherein were prepared only a few short weeks ago
dry-as-dust documents, which so hastened the storm by not promptly
arresting it. For the Chancery of the British Legation is now the
hospital, and on despatch tables, lately littered with diplomatic
documents, operations are now almost hourly performed and muttered
groans wrung from maimed men. It is a curious thought this--to think
that the vengeance of foolish despatches overtakes innocent men and
lays them groaning and bleeding on the very spot where the ink which
framed them flowed. It does not often happen that cause and effect
meet like this.

It is a wretched hospital, too, even though it is the best which can
be made. Every window has to be bricked in partially; every entrance
where bullets might flick in must be closed; and in the heat and dust
of a Peking summer the stench is terrible. Worse still are the flies,
which, attracted by the newly spilt blood of strong men, swarm so
thickly that another torture is added. Half the nationalities of
Europe lie groaning together, each calling in his native tongue for
water, or for help to loosen a bandage which in the shimmering heat
has become unbearable. And as the rifle cracking rises to the storm it
always does every few hours, more men will be brought in and laid on
that gruesome operating table. The very passageways have been already
invaded by men lying on long chairs, because there are no more beds.
Even they are happy; they have crept to a place where they can gasp in
quiet; that is all they ask for.

In a hideous little r