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FROM TIEN-TSIN TO PEKIN - THE BATTLE AND RESCUE OF THE LEGATIONS.

The greatest historic event of 1900 was China's amazingly audacious affront to the civilized world, by her barbaric attack upon the official representatives, at her court, of the United States, Great Britian, Russia, Germany, France, Austria, Italy, Holland, and Spain. Such an outrage upon envoys was unprecedented in the world's history, and nothing else has ever inspired such an universal thrill of indignation.

RESCUE OF PEKIN.

At the time it was generally supposed that the ferocious hostility to foreigners developed by the Chinese was a sudden outbreak, the incitement to which was furnished by a fanatical sevret organization known as the "Boxers," but it was soon apparent, in the march of events, that the demonstration had long been premediated and was secretly approved and afterwards openly encouraged by the Chinese government.

Danger was already in the air as long ago as September, 1898, when the Empress Dowager seized the reins of government fron the then feeble hands of the reformer Emperor Kwang Hsu, and prudent men foresaw terrible consequences from the rapid growth of the "Boxer" movement in Shantung province through 1899. That movement, it is declared by the British Minister, Sir Robert Hart, "was patriotic in origin and justifiable in its fundamental idea." Perhaps it was, but when it passed from idea to action, its manifestation was simply a savage, unreasoning and uncompromising hostility to foreigners. Indifferent to the sentiments of the civilized world and reckless of consequences, the furious "Boxers" sought to exterminate the hated foreigners.

By the latter part of May, 1900, the "Boxers" movement had extended through Pecheli province and reached Pekin, where the conditions were recognized as so threatening that the foreign legations in Pekin called upon the war ships of their respective nationalities, off Taku, for an extraordinary guard of three or four hundred men to protect them.