“Well, you can eat as much as you like, but eat quickly, for we want to know about everything. We have only heard that there was very little fighting on the way up, and that the Japs did the principal part of it.”
“Yes, and I was fortunate enough to see it all, for I came up as interpreter to their head–quarter staff. I can tell you in very few words about our march up here; the principal event was the fighting yesterday. But I must finish eating before I begin talking about that.”
After he had made a good meal Rex gave them a full account of the storming of the gate by the Japanese. When he finished, Sandwich said: “Now, tell us how it is that they have been such a tremendous time in relieving us, and also what has happened at Tientsin.”
“The first question is easy enough to answer. All the generals made up their minds that the Legations had been captured and the whole lot of you massacred, and it was not until a despatch came down from Conger about ten days before we started, that they really woke up in earnest. But nothing had worked smoothly since the day when they came up to relieve Tientsin. We and the Japs and the Americans got on capitally together, but the others were always raising difficulties, especially the Russians. The general opinion among us was that they were playing a double game.”
“In what way, Bateman?”
“Well, that I really cannot tell you. Certainly their generals altogether opposed the march up, and it was only when Gaselee and Chaffee declared that they would go alone, if none of the others would accompany them, that the Russians had to give way. It was generally believed that they wanted in some way to pose as friends of China, and on the strength of that to get concessions and that sort of thing, and especially to obtain from China the concession of the whole of Manchuria. I have no doubt they will try on that game now, when things settle down again, unless the other Powers back up China.”
“It is a rum state of things altogether,” Sandwich said.
“Well, tell us all about Tientsin.”
“To begin with, then, Tientsin and the settlements have to a large extent ceased to exist.”
“What? Was the fighting so severe as that? We have heard nothing whatever about it.”