We now feel that our tactics must be entirely defensive. Although to-day is Sunday, most of the women in the compound, missionary women included, are working hard at sewing sandbags, the non-fighting men filling them. Beautiful material of all kinds is being used for these bags. Liberty satin curtains from London and linen monogrammed sheets from Paris are cut up ruthlessly to be used. One hundred thousand bags, as near as they can be counted, have been made already. It was principally in the Fu, defended by gallant Colonel Shiba, that the materials procured were so gorgeous. Bags were made from the bolts and rolls of brocades and satins that constituted part of the treasure left by Prince Su in his palace when he so kindly turned it over to his persecuted fellow-citizens. This is the one bright, wonderful bit of colouring in the compound: it is the barricades of thousands of big sandbags made entirely of these gorgeous-coloured satin brocades—sky-blues, blood-red, Imperial yellows—thousands and thousands piled one upon the other. It has been built from the ground up to the second story of the Chancery building—a rather high house for Peking. It was made at this building, as the firing has been very heavy here—a most extraordinary, butterfly-coloured barricade; and if it were anywhere in the world except in this siege in Peking, there would be seen lines of artists, with sketch-book and easel, trying to put this unusual effect on canvas. _Tuesday, July 3._ For several days past the Chinese on the Tartar Wall have been bolder and bolder, and yesterday they built their last barricade so near ours that they could, and did, throw big rocks over into our lines, which, by a lucky chance, hurt no one. The moral effect of this dangerous propinquity was terrible on our men. They felt that there was only one almost ineffective barricade between them and hordes of Tu Fu-hsiang’s soldiers—the notoriously cruel Mohammedan chief and his bandits. Mr. Squiers was the first to appreciate this great danger, and certainly the first to think of the cure, and, what was more to the point, he put it through. The pros and cons were discussed with Sir Claude in conference, and it was decided that a charge down the Wall must be made, and soon, or else we must leave it entirely, and that none of the Americans were willing to do, as we had been there from the beginning, and although the Germans gave up their position on the Wall, we were not content to do the same.