As I went into the city I must have passed five thousand people--mostly in little processions of sixes and sevens, wending their way through the gates out of range of the fire of guns. I could not help but look upon them in pity, for disappointment was writ large upon their faces. They were some of the great percentage of the Chinese proletariat who delight to go with the crowd, like to shout with the majority. A fortnight earlier the Wuchang Republican party was on the top, was commanding all that came before it, and therefore did the thousands of the non-thinking portion of the community of the capital city delight in being loyal supporters. But now the tide for the time seemed to have turned, they were being bandied about from pillar to post daily, calamity after calamity seemed woefully to overtake them, and they almost wished, as they followed each slowly behind the other in common evacuation, that they had hesitated before plumping for the Revolutionaries. Tea-shops were almost deserted, rice-shops did no business, one felt that {168} the military activity was greatly bluff. Wuchang had suddenly become a forlorn city, and the inhabitants disappointed people. Outside the Assembly Hall the revolutionary flags flapped in the wind, and there was little evidence that the conditions of affairs inside had altered very much, but as I walked up the steps, showed my card, and asked to see the General the staff officers looked askance at me, asked each other whether I was of German nationality, and told me that for some considerable time it would be quite impossible to see General Li. As I moved about the offices, however, I confess to some admiration at the way in which, under all their adverse circumstances and the consequent disappointment which the re-taking of Hanyang must have been to them all, the officers were going about their work with a quiet dignity and assurance that they were working on a thing that was not soon to pass away. One of the young fellows, a man of some four-and-twenty, who one could easily see had been educated in the States, told me that they, were all as confident as could be that their present position was as strong as ever it was.