15th Sept.
Tue Sungpu affair has been indeed a thorn in the flesh to Mr. Consul-General Bock. It has subjected him, as he has complained to the missionaries, both Swedish and Norwegiun, to " outrageous and shameless agitation" in the Press of Shanghai, and to the indignity, it is rumoured, of having had a_ protest against his appointment as Danish Consul here sent to the Foreign Office at Copenhagen by the Danish residents here, though as to this he has the consolation of knowing that the protest was ineffectual. He has evidently made up his mind that he will: not get into similar trouble again. One way, the better way it seems to us, of avoiding a recurrence of the mess he has got himself into, would be to act firmly with the Chinese when a similar case arises, relying For support on the cooperation, which he can see would be readily given him, of the representatives of the other Powers. But this is not Mr. Bock's way. As he truly says, if Messrs. Wikholm and Johansson had not been at Sungpu on the Ist July last they could not have been murdered and in the same way, if the Swedish and Norwegian missionaries keep their complaints to themselves, he will not get into a mess in dealing with them. With the view of protecting himself from being bothered with disagreeable matters, he has issued to all the Swedish and Norwegian missionaries in China the following instructions
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.