Copyright, M. S. Woodward
CAPTAIN McCALLA, COMMANDING THE AMERICAN MARINES
The heat is becoming insufferable, and the children of the diplomatic corps are showing the bad effects of this enforced confinement. The British Minister’s wife, Lady Macdonald, has sent her little girls back to their legation bungalow in the hills, in the care of her charming sister, Miss Armstrong, with a guard of thirty marines. We cannot solve the problem in our Legation this way, as our guard is so much smaller.
June 5.
We expected Admiral Kempff yesterday from Tien-tsin, but the train did not come through, and we do not know whether he was on it or not. The invitations for a dinner in his honour have been cancelled.
Mrs. Brent, with whom I am to return to Japan, has sent me word to be ready to-morrow to take the morning train to Tien-tsin. So far all the trains from Peking down seem to get through, although the trains up are irregular. Rumour comes that yesterday two more stations were burnt, one on the Hankow line and one on the Tien-tsin line, but the actual tracks are not destroyed.
Everyone feels that this is the time to leave Peking—everyone, at least, who is not bound to remain to protect interests they have in charge—and to-morrow surely the exodus will be large. Captain Myers, in command of the United States marines, and Captain Strouts, of the British marines, had a long consultation to-day about these incredibly outrageous Boxers, in case they should dare impertinences on the Legations. Should we be forced to leave our American compound, we will go to the Russian Legation, which has a stronger defensive position than ours.
June 7.
Yesterday I was ready to start with Mrs. Brent, when a letter came for Mrs. Squiers from Sir Robert Hart, saying he thought the train would eventually “get through” to Tien-tsin, but that his secret service agents had informed him that there were rioters and Boxers at several stations prepared to stone the passenger coaches, and he urged me not to attempt the trip. He wrote: “Things must get better soon or very much worse.”
Captain Myers and his men were up all night guarding the compound. This United States Legation is such a wretched little irregular place to defend—it could so easily be fired.
The atmosphere of the compound is distinctly exciting. The quintessence of American interests are discussed right here in the open air, under a few scattered big trees, by people walking about gesticulating or standing on scorching hot flagstones, which pave part of this enclosure, arguing with one another as to how soon the coup d’état will take place, but all agreeing on one point—that a cable should be sent immediately to the State Department in Washington before telegraphic communication is lost; that nothing but a tremendous armed force can free the Americans in Peking from a surely approaching massacre; that many of the higher Chinese officials would try to protect us to the end. But the fact remains, if the Boxers and rioters continue to increase in numbers each day as they have been doing for the past week, it will be the mob we will have to deal with, and not the Tsung-li Yamen.