As we were taking leave of the General at the close of the meeting, he said to me: “I think you will speak to my officers this evening,” which meant the five o’clock service for officers. I felt overwhelmed, as the two services had been very exhausting, but my host suggested that I should give them an account of what we had seen of the Chinese Home Missionary Society, and of the work amongst the aborigines, and the General said that would interest them very much. He said that the morning address had been not at all like what he expected, but did not explain the statement. Of course, it was impossible to decline, and I took for granted there would be only a small gathering—perhaps two or three dozen men. At five o’clock we were back at the hall and there must have been from two to three hundred officers present and many ladies in the gallery. Again the same quiet spirit of worship and eager expectancy dominated, and the expression of those upturned faces will never fade from my memory, as I told the story of the missionaries coming to barbarian Britain, delivering their Message and leaving the living Message to fulfil itself, the British Church in its turn becoming the missionary to China, who, in its turn, is now called to take up the task, and is beginning to do so. After the General had seen us out of the hall he turned back, and did not rejoin us for some time, the reason being (as I learned, after leaving Changteh, from my interpreter, who was the friend of the General’s interpreter) that he went back to urge the audience to pay heed to the thing which had been said, and to say a few words about the speaker. In the whole matter he acted with such striking self-forgetfulness and tact as I have rarely, if ever, met. It was not to be expected that such a happy state of affairs would be allowed to continue more than a limited time; for the forces of evil do not accept tamely such a defiance. As in the old days at Ephesus, seeing the source of their wealth attacked, there were plenty of people ready to counter-attack by fair means or foul. A few months later General Feng got his orders to leave Changteh. No sooner had he done so than the Southern troops swarmed back into the undefended city. The houses of ill fame were at once reopened, under military sanction, with soldiers posted at the doors. A time of much unrest followed, and no one knows from day to day what will happen. There is great disorder among the ill-paid troops, and shooting among themselves took place in the streets. An officer was shot close beside the mission premises where we stayed. The schools have been closed and the opium dens and theatres reopened. The Southern troops now hold all the important part of the province, a serious loss to the Government at Peking. Business is at a standstill.