Noruinc is more unintelligible to the average thoughtful foreigner than the indifference which the home governments have displayed to the Chuchou massacre. The number of foreigners killed was not so large as in Shansi, but the barbarity shown to and the outrages inflicted on the victims were as savage as any recorded in this year's campaign of cruelty. The Taotai of Chuchou, Pao Ho-nien, to whom, under the Governor who has just been relieved of his post without undergoing any other punishment, the massacre was due, absconded some months after the date of his crime, when he heard that enquiries were being made. This is the man to whom Mr. D. B. Thompson applied for assistance, and who thrust the applicant from his yamen, making himself thus directly responsible for the savage murder of Mr. Thompson and his wife and two children. The other victims were Mr. and Mrs. G. T. Ward and one child, Miss Sherwood, Miss M. Manchester, Miss J. E. Desmond, and Miss Thirgood. This massacre, if it had stood alone, accompanied as it was by outrages of which it is impossible to print the details, would have stirred the whole Christian world with a long-enduring horror, and have aroused a demand for vengeance that would never have consented to a delay of nearly five months, A detachment of the foreign troops that are eating their hearts out in idleness here would long ago have been despatched to Chuchou and exacted a just retribution; but the Viceroy of the Min-Che provinces is a party to the Yangtze compact, and so the home governments have allowed the matter to drift along. The oficial primarily responsible, the Governor of Chekiang, Liu Shu-tang, has been indeed removed frown his post in order to get him out of the trouble of making reparation; he has not been disgraced. We know that Mr. Pelham Warren has been almost importunate in his representations as to the necessity for punishment in this flagrant case, but he has not been listened to, for the outrage on international law and comity involved in the attack on the Legations at Peking has almost exhausted the indignation at the disposal of our authorities at home.
We announced some days ago the discovery and arrest. at Changchou of the absconding Taotai of Chuchou, and we may add that his fight was primarily due to the charge of murdering her husband brought against him by the widow of Wa, the magistrate at Hsian, near Chuchou. We now learn that he was taken under escort past Soochow, and thence sent back to Hangchow in charge of a wei yuan (deputy) with a large guard of soldiers. Though under arrest, as he is still untried, he is allowed to travel in a kind of state and with every comfort—this villain with his hands dyed in the blood of European ladies and children, as well as men. It is to be hoped that there will be no vacillation in dealing with him. It will be an injustice to those who were decapitated by order of the International Court at Paotingfu if this man is allowed to escape the just penalty for his conduct. The first demands of the allies were stated to be the punishment of the instigators of massacres and guarantees for the future; and one of the best guarantees for the future good conduct of Chinese officials is the punishment when their guilt is proved of those who have murdered missionaries. There must be no vacillation then in dealing with this Taotai of Chitchou,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.