0th Dec.
We are authorised by Dr. Stuebel, the Consul-General for Germany at Shanghai, to say that he has no information whatever as to the concession to Germany by the Chinese Government of a large piece of land to the west of the Anglo-American settlement.
Under these circumstances it is teresting to consider how such a circumstantial report as that which has been spread among the yamens and the vernacular papers has arisen. The Consuls here and the Ministers at Peking have been interesting themselves warmly in the Municipal Council's efforts to obtain an extension of the Settlement, and it is thoroughly well known that Baron Heyking, the German Minister, has made and would make no attempt to obtain a separate settlement for Germany. Germany does not want such a settlement, nor would the German Government undertake the cost of administering it and_ certainly neither Baron Heyking nor Dr, Stuebel would take advantage of the general endeavour to procure an extension of the settlement to secure a separate concession for Germany; and if it were conceivable that they could do such a thing, they would certainly not choose A site a grent part of which is British-owned, or the public property of the cosmopolitan, but mainly British, community residing in the so-called Auglo-American settlement, It is suggested, however, that the Nsungli Yamen may have had the idea that it could not ultimately refuse the request of the Ministers for an extension of the settlement—and as a matter of fact this extension is, we believe, certain and that before very long—and that it would be a happy thought to offer the new extension as a sop to Germany, who has not been very liberally paid so far for her assistance in obtaining the retrocession of the Linotung Peninsula, It wight well seem to the fossils of the Yamen, who are not very anxious te oblige Bugland, having entirely forgotten that to England they owe the security of the Yangtze during the late war with Japan, that they would be doing a good stroke of business in giving to Germany alone what the German Minister was loyally assisting Sir Claude MacDonald to secure; leaving it for the German Minister, if he chose, to hand it over to the existing Shanghai municipality. OF course, the German Minister would not for a moment be a party to this roundabout way of satisfying the aspirations of the Shanghai municipality; and as the Yamen would probably have savoir faire enough to ascertain before making it whether the offer would be acceptable, we may put aside this solution of the difficulty.
It is most probable that the whole report is due to the new regime in the Tnotai's yamen in the City. he negotiations that have been going on here in reference to the extension of the settlement go, of course, through Dr, Stuebel as the Senior Consul, and it is probable that the officials in the ''aotai's yamen have thus got it into their heads that the new extension is to be German, and have talked about it as German until the editors of the native papers have been persuaded that the extension has been actually granted to Germany. It seems to be constantly forgotten that the so-called Anglo-American Settlement, even that part of it south of the Soochow Creek, is not now British but cosmopolitan, and that Germany has just as much interest in it, proportionately, as Great Britain has. In Hankow and Tientsin, where Germany has recently obtained concessions, the original concessions are British, and there is some reason wh; Germany should ask for similar pri leges; but there is none in Shanghai where only the French insist on keeping their settlement them-to selves, as far as its administration goes, 'I'he former narrow-mindedness that decided on keeping the French Concession separate has not been a very practical grievance, because successive French Consuls and Councils have generally worked cordially in administrative matters with the powers on the north of the Yangkingpang; but it would certainly have been for the benefit of the settlement between the Yangkingpang and the City if it had been originally united with the so-called British settlement as the so-called American settlement is; and the German authorities are far too evlightened to want to set up now a German imperium in our midst. Meanwhile, we are perhaps not too sanguine if we conclude that these incorrect ramours about a German settlement have some basis; Zo, that the extension of the Anglo-American settlement on the lines proposed by our Municipal Council is within a measurable distance of being granted.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.