The actual march to Pekin has begun. An army of
twelve thousand Indians, Japanese, and Americans, under the com. mand of three Generals, started on the 4th inst. from Tientsin, and on Sunday cleared away a Chinese force at Peitsang, ten miles on the road. The Chinese were entrenched, the fighting was sharp for five hours, and according to rather confused accounts the Allies lost some five hundred men in killed and wounded, of whom sixty-five were Indians in British service. No guns were taken, nor were the Chinese pursued, and another engagement took place at Yangtstin next day. This town, according to General Chaffee's telegram to Washington published on Friday, was taken on Monday. That is, no doubt, an event of importance, but as the country has been flooded movement must be slow, and the most serious fighting is expected further on at Lang-fang, where Admiral Seymour turned, and at Tang, where a Japanese column of fifteen thousand men advancing from Shan-hai-kwan is expected to join the direct attack. The plan seems well laid, but the foreign critics at Tientsin say that the force is inadequate, that transport is imperfect, and that the country has been turned into a nearly impracticable morass. We fear there is ground for these criticisms, and for this other, that the proportion of white men in the force is unprecedentedly low.
