Nobody should have been allowed to stay behind after hearing for so many weeks that ceaseless roar, sustaining that endless strain, enduring so much. They should have been made to forget--by force. And yet even this nobody understands or cares to speak of, although a number of men are still half mad. The newcomers, soldiers and civilians alike, who never cease streaming in now to gaze and gape and inquire how it was all done, are quite indifferent. Some say that it must have been an immense farce--that there was really nothing worth speaking about. Others wish to know curious details which have no general importance. The Englishmen are proud, and want to know whether you were inside the British Legation, their Legation, and when they have heard yes or no their interest ceases. They little know what the Legation stood for. The Americans march up to the Tartar Wall, talk about "Uncle Sam's boys," and exclaim that it requires no guessing to tell who saved the Legations. The French are the same, so are the Germans, so even the Italians. Only the Japanese and the Russians say nothing. At first I was at some pains to explain to each separate man what really occurred. I pulled out my rough map, all thumb-marked and dirtied with brick chips and the soil of the trenches, and showed stage by stage how the drama unrolled. It was no good. Poor me! nobody quite understood. Some thought possibly that I was a glib liar; others did not even trouble to think anything. How much they understood! They had not the background, the atmosphere, the long weeks which were necessary to teach even us ourselves. They had not tasted the poison and did not yet suspect its existence. So I gradually desisted. Now I say nothing, never a word. I listen and understand how history is made. It is best never to explain or argue if you thoroughly understand. Rhetoric is only the amplification of something long understood in one's heart of hearts. I am, therefore, tired of it all, inexpressibly tired. I wish to escape from my hospital, to go away to some clean land where they understand so little of such things that their indifference will in the end, perhaps, convince me and make me forget. Yet can one ever forget? XVI THE END November, 1900. * * * * * Another month, and I have made up my mind quite suddenly. I have finished with it--at least, in outward form. After waiting a couple of weeks and wondering what I should do, a last argument brought it about--an argument with a German which ended by enraging me to an impossible point and making me challenge him to anything he liked. That showed me that my last safe moment had arrived.