ABSTRACT
In November 1897, during a meeting of the Plague Commission, 1 a dispatch was handed to our foreign minister, Count Muravev. Obviously affected by it, he handed it to me: it stated that German naval vessels had landed troops at Kiaochow Bay [in China] and that these troops had occupied the port of Tsingtao. I told Count Muravev that the Germans probably intended to stay only temporarily and that if they did not leave, we and other powers should compel them to depart. He did not reply, being evidently reluctant to say yea or nay. I was astonished at the German action, but, as I was to learn later, he was not. From subsequent German statements we learned that the action they had taken had been in reprisal for the murder of German missionaries some months earlier. It seemed odd to me at the time that the Germans should have reacted with as much force as they had.
