October 25.
Tue announcement of the death of King Chulalongkorn of Siam will be generally received with the genuine, bat detached, interest with which the passing of any man who has held high place in his own country is learned. To pretend that the weal of the world will be much affected by the death of a ruler who was chiefly known to Western peoples as a genial, open-banded potentate, whose inability, while on foreign tours, to understand the financial limitations of his country was the despair of his Ministers, would be to carry polite fiction to ridiculous excess. 'The Kingdom of Siam has been always nominally independent, but even that nominal autonomy has been due, not to the: martial or diplomatic prowess of Siam's ruler or of Siamese statesmen, but to circumstances similar' to those which have preserved Afghanistan, Persia, and until Intely Korea, from foreign overlordship. But, while it would be!
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.