Ordered to China. Letters of Wilbur j. Chamberlin. (Methuen and
Co. 6s.)—Mr. Chamberlin—the name is, strangely enough, spelt in two ways in the "Introductory Note "—went out as war correspondent for the New York Sun in the "Boxer" Rising and the events that followed. Here we have his letters written home while he was on his voyage and in China. The earliest bears date August 5th, 1900. He was then on his way to Chicago. The latest was written at Carlsbad just a year later. He had gone there for a cure, and there he died on August 13th, 1901. The letters are exceedingly picturesque, and full of humour, though the humour is sometimes coarse and unfeeling. What he says about the conduct of the Allies is not pleasant reading. "Everybody went loot-mad at Tien-Tsin and here [Peking]." "At Tung-Chow and even here in Peking the wells were found full of dead women who jumped into them." But he allows that he did not know these things at first hand. After describing various atrocities, he goes on : "These are pictures of the French, the Russians, and in some cases of the English." The Germans he does not mention here, but he says of them (p. 163) : "They are still shooting around here, just as if a war were going on.
They are a big lot of swine, if human beings ever are swine " The value of Mr. Chamberlin's testimony we do not
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