This was an exceptional case. Ordinarily the correspondent and the Chinese helpers were equal to every occasion. For a monetary consideration commensurate with the risk they ran, they would take the correspondent almost anywhere. He got into a covered Peking cart, and left the rest to his men. The cart would dawdle along when nearing a Russian picket, until a number of native carts joined the procession. At the post there would be a crowd; if you kept your cover down, other Chinese carts with native passengers did so; whilst they were being examined your driver contrived to get into the line of those passed as correct. At most you wanted only two or three carts. Those in advance acted as scouts, their drivers warning your carter what was happening ahead. Success in spying depends not so much in ability to get out of difficult situations as in having the good sense to avoid them. For most of the mistakes the correspondents made they were themselves to blame. The credulity with which they absorbed rumour was equalled only by the avidity with which they sought news. Some might consider their colleagues to be their worst enemies. One would ask another what he thought of the serious position created by General Ma bringing 40,000 Chinese soldiers outside the Great Wall of China. He questioned to get the speaker’s idea of the extent of the seriousness, not daring to own that he had not received the news, or questioning the fact itself. After a general talk all round, some one of the crowd was as likely as not to wire off as news what was only an assumed state of affairs. In this way the Japanese were reported to have torpedoed a pilot boat, to have captured half South Manchuria before they left Korea, and to have achieved numerous impossibilities. The Russian officials were not guiltless. The cabling of a little false news afforded them an excuse for being rid of a correspondent when his presence was not desired. Trap after trap was set, and he was indeed wary or inactive who escaped them all.