Part 25 (1/2)

Another month has come and there has been practically no change. They say now Prince Ching has no power to treat, and that he is a mere j.a.panese prisoner. Li Hung Chang is in Tientsin, too, it appears. He is to be the other plenipotentiary when negotiations really commence, but for the time being he is the Russian captive. The Russians have him surrounded with their troops, and no one but a favoured few may even see him. Already there has been trouble with the British on this score at Tientsin, and some people say that some pretext will be seized to bring about an international crisis among the expeditionary corps. They are fighting about the destroyed railway up to Peking already. Various people are claiming the right to rebuild the line, and refuse to give up the sections they have garrisoned. Everywhere there are pretty complications in the air.

Meanwhile, in Peking itself things have become more and more quiet, and as the policing is slowly improving, confidence is a little restored. But still new troops are being marched in all the time--notably German troops--and as soon as night closes down all these men fall to looting and outraging in any way they can. They say that the Kaiser, in his farewell speech to his first contingent, before Peking had been heard of for weeks, told the men to act in this way. They are strictly obeying orders. Even the officers of the new troops take a hand in this looting in a modified way. They force their way into the remains of the curio shops, take the few pieces which are left, place a dollar or so on the counter and then walk out.

This makes a legitimate purchase.

In the j.a.panese district, which is now the best policed and the most tranquil, shops are being reopened, but are now being panic-stricken by this new procedure. It is the refinement of the game, and there is no redress possible. Beyond this I know not of a thing worth the mentioning.

XIII

STILL DRIFTING

October, 1900.

There is, after all, to be no immediate peace--that seems now quite certain. We hear that the Russians have invaded all Manchuria and are strengthening their hold there by bringing in more and more troops from the Amur districts. They say, too, that the French have crossed the Tonkin frontier. But really accurately we know nothing very much of what is being done. With sixty or seventy thousand soldiery suddenly flung down on the ruined stretch of country between Peking and the sea, everything has been put in the most horrible confusion.

You can get nothing, nor hear anything. Telegrams are the only things which are coming through with any regularity, and even these are cut to pieces by the field telegraphs or continually getting lost. The mails, it is true, have at last arrived, but they are all mixed in such a way, and there is such old correspondence heaped on top of the new, that general instructions and the proposals made read in this way seem to be the ravings of madmen. There are hundreds of despatches of April, May and June, showing the calibre of some Foreign Offices in an unmistakable way. I sometimes wonder if only the fools are left in the home offices.

Still, after a good many headaches, one can begin to appreciate the general plan which was finally settled on by the various _Chancelleries_, and to understand what delayed the relief so much.

Most of all it has been the South African war. Also, is seems to me, they wanted Waldersee, the German Field Marshal, to have time to take over the supreme command for the sake of peace in Asia, and so that there should be an enormous ma.s.sed advance on Peking, which would capture all North China to Christendom and enslave the cunning old Empress Dowager, and do everything as arranged in Europe. It was, above all, necessary not to cause an imbroglio in Europe.

Of course, the very opposite has happened, and everybody is now as discontented and jealous as before the siege. Waldersee is in Tientsin and has been there for weeks for some new decision to be made. The grand advance is finished and done with, but now some column commanders wish to push down into the south of the province and isolate the Court, if possible. Meetings are being held the whole time, but as Waldersee is coming up, nothing is to be done until his arrival. By one ingenious stroke--the sudden flight of the Court--the Chinese have turned the tables on allied Europe and made us all ridiculous. Any one might have antic.i.p.ated something of this--there is a precedent in the histories. Yet history is only made to be immediately forgotten.

XIV

PUNITIVE EXPEDITIONS

October, 1900.

At length Waldersee has arrived. He made a sort of entry which seemed to me farcical. I only noticed that he was very old, and that the hats that have been served out to the special German expeditionary corps are absurd. They are made of straw and are shaped after the manner of the Colonial hats used in South Africa. They have also a c.o.c.kade of the German colours sewn to the turned-up edge. This must be some Berlin tailor's idea of an appropriate head-dress for a summer and autumn campaign in the East. The hat is quite useless, and had it been a month earlier all the men would certainly have died of sunstroke.

Of course, now with Waldersee in Peking, something more has to be done, and the rumour is to-day that the Court has begun fleeing yet farther to the West. The rulers of China are being kept accurately informed of every move by some one, and any indication of a pursuit will see them penetrate farther and farther towards the vast regions of Central Asia. It seems to me that it would be almost amusing (would not the consequences be so tragic) to begin this pursuit and really to attempt to push the Court so far away that it finally lost touch with all the rest of China. Then something beneficial to everyone might come. An ultimatum, to which attention would be paid, might be served, and guarantees exacted which would do service for a number of years. At present the flight has done no harm whatever to China. The Court is not even ridiculous in the eyes of the populace. It is merely terribly unfortunate--a really luckless Court, which deserves to be commiserated with and wept over rather than upbraided. For it is plain to everyone that the first and last reason for all this is the foreigner and no one else. Everything the foreigner does is always a source of trouble.

Even the machinery of government has not been disturbed by the fact that vast Peking, the vaunted capital, is in the hands of ruthless invaders. At first everyone thought that with the Palace empty, and all the great Boards and offices made mere camping-places for thousands of hostile soldiery, the government of the whole empire would be paralysed--sterilised. Yet that has not happened. The government goes on much the same as ever. We know that now. For as the Court flees it issues edicts, receives reports and accounts, is met with tribute from provincial governors and viceroys, is clothed and banqueted, makes fresh appointments, does its day's work while it runs. I cannot understand, therefore, how this is to end. It is beyond the keenest intellects in Peking, and people are now simply waiting for things to happen and to accept facts as they may be dealt out by the Fates. It is an inevitable policy. For you must always accept facts when you cannot mould them.

XV

THE CLIMAX

October, 1900.

I am becoming tired of it all once again--inexpressibly tired. It seems to me at times now as if those of us who remain had been very sick, and then, when we had become convalescent, had been ordered by some cruel fate to remain sitting in our sick-rooms forever. A siege is always a hospital--a hospital where mad thoughts abound and where mad things are done; where, under the stimulus of an unnatural excitement, new beings are evolved, beings who, while having the outward shape of their former selves, and, indeed, most of the old outward characteristics, are yet reborn in some subtle way and are no longer the same.