On a lantern-lit Chinese barge poled by boatmen over the dark Pel Hai Lake in the Imperial City, a party from the American Embassy enjoyed a serene excursion under a full moon on the evening of July 7, 1937. In the group were Colonel and Mrs. Stilwell and their daughter Nance; Ambassador and Mrs. Nelson Johnson; Colonel John Marston, commander of the Marine Embassy Guard, and his wife; and Stilwell’s journalist friend John Goette. Ambassador Johnson had brought his guitar and played his favorite song, Down That Weary Road, as the boatmen paced rhythmically up and down the deck. Light from the boat’s lanterns glimmered in the water, and lit by the moon the softly gleaming white marble dagoba on Jewelled Island rose out of the darkness like the vision of a Buddhist grail. The party felt themselves surrounded by the spirit of ancient Peking, until reality glided by in another boat carrying a group of Japanese officers.

Colonel Marston mentioned that as senior officer of the foreign detachments he had been notified by the Japanese that their troops would be leaving the city that evening for night maneuvers at the railroad bridge at Lukouchiao, twelve miles to the west on the Peking-Hankow line. The Japanese had been holding maneuvers in the area for two weeks, causing worried speculation in the local press. The railway was the only remaining access to Peiping not under Japanese control, and Lukouchiao was a key junction where a shuttle connected with the Peking-Tientsin line. Alongside the railroad bridge a stone bridge eight hundred years old with parapets adorned by marble lions spanned the river on thirty graceful arches. One of China’s most beautiful monuments, admired by the first Westerner who crossed it in the thirteenth century, it was known in his honor as the Marco Polo Bridge.

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