THE words "The Situation in Peking is Desperate" are no doubt printed in big letters in every newspaper in the civilised world. It seems that we are to be the unwilling and horrified spectators of one of the ghastliest tragedies that has ever staggered humanity, and the Western world will ask us, and we shall never cease to ask ourselves, whether we have done everything in our power to prevent it. There-is hardly one of us who would not have said a month ago that two thousand disciplined white men led by an officer of distinction could march to and take Peking against all the rabble the Boxers cottid muster to oppose them. It is understood that when it was proposed to dispatch a mixed relieving force from Tientsin under the command of Admiral Seymour, Colonel Wogack, the Russian commander, from his military instinct and his intimate knowledge of the defences of Peking, objected that it was useless to send a relieving force without artillery. Captain McCalla, U.S. N., is said to have replied that his Minister was in danger and he and his men would go. Admiral Seymour agreed with him, and the force started. Colonel Wogack was entirely right from his point of view; to be certain of success the relieving force should have had artillery. But Admiral Seymour and Captain McCalla were also indisputably right. here were in Pekingnearly a thousand men, women, and children caught like rats in a trap, liable to be at any moment the victims of the savagery of the Manchus, who seem to have throw off altogether all the varnish of civilisation that they have slowly acquired in the last fifty years. To save these men, women, and children British and American sailors were constrained to go even if they could not command all the resources that would make success certain, nor were their brothers of other nations backward when the time came to make the effort, for we find among the killed and wounded that there were also Austrians, Frenchmen, Germans, Italians, Russians, and Japanese. The attempt was a failure, but this does not throw any shadow on the gallantry of those who made it. Grievously disappointed Admiral Seymour and the commanders with him must be, but the lustre of their heroism remains nevertheless undimmed.
The account of the progress of Admiral Seymour's relieving force shows the difficulties it encountered and the pluck and resolution with which these difficulties were met. It shows also that the Chinese
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.