Now, when the French residents of Hankow telegraphed to Paris demanding that troops be sent forthwith from Tientsin or Tonking hands went up in horror that French consular control had so far got into disrepair as to bring about such a step. But when the British residents almost immediately followed suit it became patent that the situation was serious. Foreigners from the Japanese Concession (farthest removed from the native city of Hankow) to the British Concession (divided from the city by a thirty-foot road) were just then in greater direct danger than they had been since the campaign started. Five weeks had now elapsed since the war started, and on November 18th I think I am right in saying that not one-half of the protecting force was in the port, at the zenith of the danger, that was available a week after the Revolution broke out. That five hundred men available from all gunboats in port, with the Japanese largely preponderating, were enough to protect a settlement of approximately rectangular shape, four miles by one, was absurd on the very face of things. Four thousand men from all nations represented would not have been too many at that time. When hostilities were being carried on immediately outside the Concessions, when every day a man was shot fatally or wounded seriously in the streets of the British Concession, when shells dropped with startling rapidity into private houses and broke up the property of British residents, when the gravest danger was incurred by walking along the waterfront which extends the whole length of the Concession, when all shipping had to withdraw from the usual landing hulks, and when the official protests to remove the batteries from dangerous proximity back of the Concessions and so cause shelling over the foreign settlement to cease was persistently refused, surely, {122} again, it was not too much to expect that the authorities were making due arrangements for troops to be sent to Hankow to prevent what every one undertook to believe would be inevitable--namely, the rushing through the Concessions of the enemy and the chasing of them by the victorious faction. The whole thing culminated on November 18th, when a meeting of British subjects was held. The following dispatch was the result of a long discussion on the general situation and what was best to be done:-- "HERBERT GOFFE, Esq., H.B.M. Acting Consul-General, Hankow. "SIR,--We the undersigned British residents beg respectfully that you will forward the following protest to His Majesty's Minister with a request that it be forwarded to the proper authorities: 1. "The _London and China Express_ of October 20 says, It is officially stated that the policy of Great Britain in the present situation in China will be limited to taking every means considered necessary for the protection of the lives and the property of her nationals.'