26th March.
We received yesterday morning the news, which we circulated at once as an "Extra," of the murder ofa well-known missionary of the London Missionary Society, the Rev. J. Stone-house, at a place only forty miles from Peking, and between the capital and Tientsin, twenty miles beyond Yangtsun. Mr. Stonehouse came to China nineteen years ago, and was too well acquainted with the country and the people to run unnecessary risks. That after all that has occurred, after the lesson the Chinese have received, a missionary should be murdered by armed bandits between two garrisons aggregating more than fifty thousand foreign soldiers seems incredible, but it is not really to be wondered at. We have known for some time that the result of the operations of the. allied troops was a condition in the country of absolute anarchy. All Chinese authority has been disorganised if not suppressed, and no other authority put in its place, while hundreds, if not thousands, of villagers have been driven from their homes, which have been plundered and burat, and they themselves forced by starvation to become bandits. They have been harried not only by regular troops, but by small bands of irregulars, outcast foreigners and Chinese mixed, and it is no wonder that a traveller, without regard to his occupation, should get killed. It is impossible to suppose that he had given any real cause of offence, except perhaps in his efforts to protect Christians against Boxers.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.