driven into their last trench--the _tranche Bartholin_, which has just
been completed. They held this to this morning and then
counter-attacked. That is why I have found myself here. Reinforcements
were rushed in by us at daybreak, and after a sleepless forty hours
the Chinese advance has been fairly held. But for how long? If they
act as earnestly during the next week we are finished!

XIII

THE BRITISH LEGATION BASE

15th July, 1900.

* * * * *

Fortunately, startling events of the sort I have just described are
confined to the outposts, and the half a dozen closely threatened
points. Our main base, the British Legation, is little affected, and
many in it do not appear to realise or to know anything of these
frantic encounters along the outer lines. They can tell from the
stretcher-parties that come in at all hours of the day and night, and
pass down to the hospital, what success the Chinese fire is having,
but beyond this they know nothing. They secretly hope, most of them,
that it will remain like this to the end; that bullets and shells may
scream overhead, but that they may be left attending to minor affairs.
As I look around me, it appears more and more evident that
self-preservation is the dominant, mean characteristic of modern
mankind. The universal attitude is: spare me and take all my less
worthy neighbours. In gaining in skin-deep civilisation we have lost
in the animal-fighting capacity. We are truly mainly grotesque when
our lives are in danger.

In the British Legation time has even been found to establish a model
laundry, and several able-bodied men actually fought for the privilege
of supervising it, they say, when the idea was mooted.

Neither have our Ministers improved by the seasoning process of the
siege. Most of them have become so ridiculous, that they shun the
public eye, and listen to the roar of the rifles from safe places
which cannot be discovered. And yet fully half of them are able-bodied
men, who might do valuable work; who might even take rifles and shoot.
But it is they who give a ridiculous side, and for that, at least, one
should be thankful. It is something to see P----, the French Minister,
starting out with his whole staff, all armed with _fusils de chasse_,
and looking _tres sportsman_ on a tour of inspection when everything
is quiet. Each one is well told by his tearful wife to look out for
the Boxers, to be on the alert--as if Chi