On the 28th of February, Herr von Billow, the German Imperial Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, announced in the Reichstag, at Berlin, the reception of a telegram from Tien-tsin, reporting that several Germans had been attacked and insulted in that town on the 24th, and had been compelled to take refuge in the side streets and narrow alleys. The Imperial Government, he said, had been already aware for some weeks past that a considerable feeling of irritation had manifested itself against foreigners in China, especially in the southern portion of the Province of Shantung. The Chinese Government were thereupon warned of the necessity of maintaining order and securing public safety, and, upon the receipt of the telegram above referred to, the German Minister at Peking was instructed to impress upon the Chinese Government that, if such incidents were permitted to recur, or the perpetrators allowed to escape unpunished, the consequences for China would be very serious. "We have," Herr von Bülow declared, "neither the occasion nor the desire to interfere in the internal affairs of China. But it is our duty to watch lest the life and property of our fellow subjects, whether missionaries or traders, should be made to suffer through the internal complications in China." In March, however, the state of things at and near Peking was so far improved that the Legation guards were being withdrawn. Sir Claude MacDonald obtained leave of absence and left Peking on the 23d for a visit to England, and the business of the Legation was conducted for a time by Mr. Bax-Ironside, the Charge d'Affaires. In June there was an anti-missionary riot at Kienning, in the neighborhood of Foochow, excited by the murder of a boy, popular rumor ascribing the murder to foreigners. "In all directions," wrote one of the threatened missionaries, who gave an account of the occurrence, "murders were said to be taking place, though no bodies were ever found; that seemed of no consequence to the people, and the story was current, and was apparently generally believed, that these murders were done by men in our employ, and that we used the eyes and legs to make medicine. There were endless stories of people being kidnapped, chloroformed in the road by a bottle being held out to their nose, and the day I arrived it was said that eyes had been found at Tai-lui, a suburb of Kienning, and as I passed a crowd was actually on the spot seeking for the said eyes." The missionaries succeeded in escaping from the mob; but one native convert was killed, and the mission hospital and other premises were looted. The ideas and the state of feeling out of which this attack on the missionaries and their converts grew are revealed in the following translation of a placard that was posted in Kienning in June: