Everything, indeed, was upside down.  Matters in the British Legation were not improving, and the fighting air which exists elsewhere is not to be found here.  Men, women and children; ponies, mules and packing-cases; sandbags and Ministers Plenipotentiary—­are still all engaged in attempting to sort themselves out and keep distinct from one another.  Already the British Legation has surrendered itself, not to the enemy, but to committees.  There are general committees, food committees, fortifications committees, and what other committees I do not know, except that American missionaries, who appear at least to have more energy than any one else, are practically ruling them.  This is all very well in its way, but it is curious to see that dozens of able bodied men, armed with rifles, are hiding away in corners so that they shall not be drafted away to the outer defences.  Everywhere a contemptible spirit is being displayed, because a feeling prevails that there are no responsible chiefs in whom absolute trust can be placed.  A pleasant mess in all truth.  It is now everyone for himself and nobody looking after the others....

Some of the people, however, have begun dividing themselves up, and now are billeted, nationality by nationality, in separate quarters.  But many persons seem lost and distraught.  H——­, the great director of Chinese affairs, was siting on an old mattress looking quite paralysed; P——­, his counterpart in the Russian bank, was striding about excitedly and muttering to himself.  The Belgian Legation has disappeared entirely; whether they have run away or been lost in the confusion I could not for the life of me tell.  What a position, what a condition!  Already it is a great feat to be on speaking terms with a dozen people, and if we could only instill some of the savageness we all feel towards one another into our defence, it would become so vigorous and unconquerable that not all the legions of the Boxer Empire, massed in serried ranks, could break in on us.  But this very defence, which should be so determined, is the most half-hearted thing imaginable.  It has no real leader, and merely resolves itself into the old policy of each Legation holding its own in an irregular half-circle round the British Legation, which itself is a mass of disorder.  I feel certain that if we have a night attack at once the Chinese will break in with the greatest ease, and then.... Tant pis!

The last thing I saw in the British Legation was M——­, the great correspondent, sitting on a great stack of his books, looking wearily around him.  His former energy and resolution have all departed, sapped by the spectacle of extraordinary incompetence around him.  Of what good has all that rescuing of native Christians been—­all that energy in dragging them more dead than alive into our lines in the face of Ministerial opposition, when we cannot even protect ourselves?  But just when I began this moralising, the hundred and fifty mules and ponies that have been