13th Nov.
Tue Lord has fortunately given us residents in Shanghai much too good a conceit of ourselves that we should be seriously annoyed at the constant references in the Western Press to our supposed untruthfulness. During the crisis in China Shanghai has naturally been the fountain of the greater part of the nows that has reached the West. While the crisis was acute, it was the only fountain, and considering the difficulty that we had in getting news, is it to be wondered at that some of the reports that were sent home turned out to be unfounded? One of the charges against us is that we reported that all the foreigners in Peking had been massacred when they were nearly all alive and well. For this no apology is necessary. With one or two exceptions, and they had no firm'ground for being still sanguine, everybody here, foreign officials, laymen, even the Chinese officials, believed that the foreigners in Peking were massacred. Tt was impossible to doubt it after the despairing messages—which have never been fully explained—sent by
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.