ent. There is always
something appropriate to write about. Yesterday the Duke of Edinburgh
died. We were officially informed to that effect, after the King
Humbert manner, and the condolences were great. Yesterday, also,
during the evening, shelling suddenly commenced and the cannon-mouths
that have been leering at us from a distance in dull curiosity at
their inactivity have barked themselves hoarsely to life again. Thus,
while diplomacy still continues, shrapnel and segment are plunging
about. At times it really seems as if the Chinese Government had
succeeded in dividing us up into two distinct categories. It has tried
to save the diplomats from shells and bullets; since they remain with
the others they must share their fate.

We listened to this cannonade with tightly pressed lips last night for
an hour and more, and, lying low, watched the splinters fly; and then,
just as the clamour appeared to be growing, it ceased as suddenly as
it had commenced, and the uproarious trumpets, that we know so well,
once more called off the attacking forces with their stentorian
voices. It seems as if an internecine warfare had begun outside our
lines--that the loosely jointed Chinese Government is also struggling
with itself. Thus legs and arms thrash around for a while and cause
chaos; then the brain reasserts its sway, and the limbs become quieted
and reposeful for a time. Never will there be such a siege again. I am
beginning to understand something of all its vast complexity, to know
that everybody is at once guilty and innocent, and that a strange
deity decrees that it must be so....

For while we are beginning to be attacked fitfully, other strange
things have been observed from the Tartar Wall. There has been some
fighting and shooting in the burned and ruined Ch'ien Men great street
down below, and Chinese cavalry have been seen chasing and cutting
down red-coated men. A species of Communism may in the end rise from
the ashes of the ruined capital, or a new dynasty be proclaimed, or
nothing may happen at all, excepting that we shall die of starvation
in a few weeks....

The native Christians in the Su wang-fu are already getting ravenous
with hunger, and are robbing us of every scrap of food they can garner
up. Their provisioning has almost broken down, in spite of every
effort, and the missionary committees and sub-committees charged with
their feeding are beginning to discriminate, they say. These vaunted
committees