National Archives and Records Administration
	The Hoovers in China   A Letter to her Best Friend
	Well, Evelyn Wight- you missed one of the opportunities of your life by not coming to China in the summer of 1900. The very fact that the things have happened that have happened make it queer that your guardian star did not get you here in time for it. So many many many times I thought of you, and that you should have been here, at the most interesting siege and bombardment of the age. The men from Lady Smith--and we have them with us, "Terrible's" guns and all,--say the bombardment there could not compare with ours. The loss of life was greater than either Kimberly or Mafeking.* Only it was so short that we did not suffer from hunger, but neither did we have the chance of honorable or otherwise, surrender before us in case hunger ever should come. We simply had to stand by our guns until the end with one last bullet kept back for each one of ourselves. Our only hope was that the Chinese can't, won't, and don't charge, and they did not, to any alarming extent. So a good many hundred civilians and a couple of thousand troops sat still and repelled faint hearted charges while 10,000 or 15,000 Chinese troops and 20,000 Boxers plunked shells of all sizes into us for exactly one week, without a sound or word from the outside reaching us. Then the first relief cut their way into us, 2,000 of them--enough to get in, but not to do anything more than we could when they got there. And for another two weeks we sat there while the relief came in from the south, at the rate of a thousand a day, more or less, while the Chinese gathered on the north more rapidly, and we gradually got to exchanging shells, instead of receiving them--and finally one day came when we sent but did not receive, and at the same time, we who can, will, and do, charge,--charged. And now the only question is the relief of Peking. For more than a month we have had but two or three unreliable messages from there! Do you realize it, that never have so many flags been in action together since our history began Russian, Japanese, French, German, Australian, Italian, English, and American! And such a motley array of troops--artillery, cavalry, infantry, marines, sailors, Cossacks, Shiki, Siamese, a couple of English Chinese regiments on our side... But we are still living it--and just now they say "Kai fan" which means tiffin [lunch] is ready-and the ink is too bad to come back to it again-Goodbye-for the nonce, dear one-I think I will see you soon-- But oh, if you had been here! Lou  *Ladysmith, Kimberly and Mafeking were British towns in South Africa which were besieged during the Boer War (1899-1902). Several 4.7 inch cannon from the British cruiser HMS Terrible were removed from the ship, fitted with gun carriages and used in the defense of Ladysmith and Kimberly. During the Boxer Rebellion, these guns were shipped to China and helped to lift the siege of Tientsin
	Memoirs of Herbert Hoover | Lou's Story | Letter to Evelyn Christmas 1899 | Using Primary Sources with Students
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