nge....

XIV

THE ULTIMATUM

19th June, 1900.

* * * * *

How foolish we can be! Only last night I was bewailing the dulness and
the dirt of it all, and the general absurdity and discomfort, and now
without one qualm I confess I would willingly exchange yesterday's
uncertainty for to-day's certainty--that we are all going to be made
into mincemeat. But I do not even feel serious or desperate now; it
has got beyond that.

I do not know at what hour the ultimatum came to-day; it may have been
eleven in the morning or one in the afternoon; but one thing I do know
is, that here, at four in the afternoon, the great majority of one
thousand Europeans are shaking, absolutely distraught. It is evident
therefrom that there is something impressive and demoralising to most
people in the idea of finality, and that on the threshold of the
twentieth century, courage, since it is seldom dealt in, is hardly a
great living force. It makes one realise, too, that with all their
faults, the aristocrats of France, who, a hundred years ago, were
condemned to the shameful death of the guillotine and went in their
tumbrils through streets filled with cursing crowds of sansculottes,
with scorn and contempt written on their features, were rather
exceptional people. Things have changed since then, and the so-called
Americanisation of the world has not conduced to gallantry. Fortunate
are we that there is no white man's audience to watch us impassively,
and to witness the effects of this bombshell of an ultimatum which has
come to-day. There is nothing so humiliating as abject fear. Curiously
enough, the women bear it much better than the elder men, who are
openly distraught; and when I say women, I mean all the women, both
those belonging to the Legations and the dozens of missionary women
who have crowded in. Nearly everyone of them is better than the
elderly men; at least, they try and say nothing so as not to add to
the terrible confusion....

But the ultimatum--what is it, and against whom is it so summarily
directed? Briefly the ultimatum is a neat-looking document written on
striped Chinese despatch-paper, and comes from the Tsung-li Yamen, or
office charged with the overseeing of "the outside nations'
affairs"--which are the affairs of Europe. After very briefly
referring to a demand made by the allied admirals for a surrender of
the Taku forts off the muddy bar of the Tientsin River--about