"Say, don't be afraid," he answered, laughingly. "We only mean to kill him with kindness. The fact is that we have just been on leave through India and Burma; and your fellows were so good to us everywhere we went that we have been looking for any stray officer of your army to give us an opportunity of returning their hospitality." "That's so," said his companion. "Now, what can we do for you? Dine you, wine you, or lend you money?" And when I told them that the unbounded kindness of their comrades in San Francisco had left me nothing to desire, they were very disappointed. Between the soldiers of every nationality there is a bond of brotherhood; and never have I found it so strong as between American officers and ours in the too few occasions on which they have met. "Blood is thicker than water"; and in the China War of 1900 Uncle Sam's troops and the British seemed to form one army. Side by side they fought in the grim combats around Tientsin. On the day when the city was stormed, when the pouches of the gallant 9th United States Infantry were empty, their brave colonel, Liscum, and a score of men killed, and four officers and seventy-two men wounded out of total of two hundred Americans engaged, a British officer, Ollivant, was killed in trying to replenish their ammunition, another, Major Pereira, was wounded in trying to bring in their injured, and Lieutenant Phillimore and his bluejackets of H.M.S. _Barfleur_ helped them to hold their ground, and brought back their wounded. In less strenuous days in North China after the fighting, our American friends there told us that they found us very different to their preconceived ideas of the English officer, whom they had pictured as a languidly haughty individual, inseparable from his eyeglass, and prefacing every remark by "I say, by Jove!" They frankly admitted that they had come prepared to dislike us, but had found us on acquaintance not such bad fellows after all. Similarly Captain Brees confessed to me that he had been obliged to reconstruct all his preconceived ideas of British military men as soon as he had met them. Before his departure from Manila I had sent him letters of introduction to many of our officers in Hong Kong, Singapore, Colombo and Calcutta. He told me that on arriving in Hong Kong he had hesitated to avail himself of them but, hardening his heart, had at last dispatched them to the addresses.