Forgetting this possible picture, let me look down and tell you what I see on this beautiful, sunshiny August morning. Before me lies what we could naturally call the terre du siège, and comprises the Japanese, German, French, Russian, American, and British compounds, all of which have their flags flying somewhere, although in most cases the original Legation flag-poles have been shot down. Then comes as a pretty piece of colouring, in contrast to the sacked, burnt, and charred Chinese houses, all that remains of the Hôtel de Pékin, with its collection of flags of all nations flying in seeming defiance from the upper windows.
Further up Legation Street one sees a dirty, tired-looking, slimy green canal, running parallel to the British Legation, with a strong and high barricade on the bridge that spans it, so that we still have communication with those Legations on the other side—namely, the Japanese, German, and French. Then between and around these oases of compounds one sees an occasional big tree which has escaped burning, and which makes the scene of desolation seem even more lonely and desolate. Hundreds of houses, half burnt, half broken up, and wholly uninhabitable, tell the story of how in those first horrible attacks at the beginning of the siege they were used by the Chinese as cover, and then looted and burnt. A stray dog of the large wolfish, mongrel type that is so common in Peking can be seen picking his way about from place to place with the queer look and walk that seem to mark carrion animals.
A GATE INTO THE IMPERIAL CITY
Standing in the same place, but looking westward, one sees such a picture of beauty as one could never imagine even in one’s most exquisite dreams—a song of green and gold, the fairyland palaces of the wicked old ogress, the Empress-Dowager, these ideal gold-topped pavilions, palaces, and pagodas rising out of a veritable sea of green, which quivers and shimmers in the warm summer sunlight. In the old days we were frankly told that it was dangerous to wander too near enchanted palaces, and if this warning had been remembered, Kings and Queens would not have sent their knights of diplomacy to live on the other side of the Wall of this mysterious “Forbidden Purple City.” It was always a hazardous thing to do, even in fairy stories, and it seems as if the tale of what happened to these misguided knights may finish in the regular good old way, “And they were eaten up and never seen any more.”
August 2.
To-day there is posted on the Bell Tower—a sort of summer-house in the centre of the British compound, where all notices are posted, and around which people congregate at all times to hear the news—the translation of the cipher letter that came yesterday to Sir R. Hart, which came from the Customs in London, through the Yamen: “Keep up heart. Chinese finally routed at Tien-tsin on July 15. Troops having great difficulty in getting enough transports, but expect to leave for Peking after July 28. Is Chinese Government protecting you, and do you get food from them?” They then refer to Mr. Conger’s telegram of the 18th.
Another choice bit of news comes to-day that two members of the Yamen have just been beheaded because they are suspected of being pro-foreign—Hsu Ching Cheng, Director of the Imperial University and President of the Manchurian Railway, at one time Minister to Germany and Russia; the other an ex-Taotai, a member of the Tsung-li Yamen, and an ex-Minister to Russia. Such is the price one pays in China for having assimilated broad ideas while enjoying diplomatic posts in Europe.
As I write, over in Mrs. Squiers’s house in the American Legation, where since this half-armistice we have been allowed to come occasionally and take a bath or read, I can see them taking away one of Mr. Squiers’s favourite ponies to be slaughtered to-morrow. The supply of horses is getting very low, and it will certainly be hard for the fighting men when the rations are reduced from horse and rice simply to rice, but it is really not pleasant to see one’s pet pony being taken off to help the supply.
August 3.