The fog is lifting in China, though not in Pekin.
There is no longer any doubt that the Empress-Regent has informally declared war on Europe, that she has ordered the Viceroys not to protect Europeans—an order textually read out by the Viceroy of Yunnan to a French agent—and that she directed the Mandarin in command of the Take forts if threatened to open fire on the European fleets. Further, the Empress has collected the different garrisons of the province of Pechili, so that she has the command of seventy-two thousand men, and has ordered them to defend the capital, and crush any force advancing upon it. What she has done with the Legations is still uncertain, bat she has let the "Boxers" loose, and they are plundering, killing, and burning in Pekin and in Tientsin—where a hundred of them have been shot by the foreigners=and throughout the sixty-five miles of country which intervene between the two places. Setting aside for the moment all rumours and conundrums about the Empress's motives, these, at least, are facts, and if they do not include a formal declaration of war, they constitute a state of war between China and Europe at large. The American and Japanese Legations being threatened, and American missionaries murdered, Japan and the United States are compelled to join Europe in its defensive measures.
