ick, over in that little temple said the medical officer pointing north, "is the worst case almost that I've had; an old Chinese woman, over sixty, who had her forearm taken off by a shell. She'd been without any sort of sistence for two days and was in a terrible state when they brought her tome. Gangrene had set in. Nasty sight it was. Had to amputate to the shoulder. But she's doing quite all right now."
On my way back, I called in to see the old lady. Round the temple doors stood a group of Chihli men, wearing dark blue turbans, who had come with the expedition from Tientsin, They took me into the stone-paved courtyard and up a flight of broken steps into a dingy tien, where a row of'gilded idols stood on a wooden altar facing the door, A dark blue bundle lay at it's foot.
"Here's an Englishman come to see you," said one unceremoniously, "wake up.
The bundle stirred and presently from ite folds of wadded blue an old, wrinkled face appeared framed in a grey disarray of hair. The smile that accompanied her tremulous, Chinese equivalent of "how do you do" was extraordinarily sweet and her faded eyes were ight with merry gratitude, "Pleas sit down" she said "please sit down." "Are you better?" I asked her. "Very much better," she quavered in reply. Indeed, T am nearly well. The English doctor has been so kind."
For a second or, two one sought the darkest corner of the room, and then stooping squatted on the ground beside her. From the Chihli men standing round rather than from her—the Shantung dialect spoken by a weak, old woman is not easy to understand—I learnt the details of her story: how she had been gathering wood on the outskirts of a village when a common shell struck her outstretched arm tearing the lower part of it away.
What the Chinese Have Suffered, I do not think that very many Chinese have been hit, but very Inrge number must have suffered in other ways in consequence of the siege of Tsingtao, From Lungkow, on the coast, to the spot from which I write and on to Tsingtao the quiet life of the province hae been rudely disturbed. Many vil-Inges ara practically deserted, some, like Litsun are half in ruins owing to bombardment; more are full of troops, who have taken over, and are living in, every available cottage. Trade if not entirely, must be practically, at a standstill. Many families must have been impoverished, some temporarily ruined. It is, of course, no more possible to wage war without hurting than to make omelettes without breaking eggs, and what has happened in Shantung has happened, on a far more terrible scale, throughout the greater part of Europe As, however, China is a neutral country, and has rigina fron
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.