Ir is granted on all bands that the condition of the Huangpu is 22 going from bad to worse; that the ne river on which Shanghai, the commercial capital of the Far East, stands is not more than half the size it was when the port was opened some sixty years ago; that it is deteriorating daily; and that the fate of the Soochow Creek, Which was once a river a mile wide, will in time, and in no long time befall the Huangpu unless 41 it is promptly taken in hand. We need not dilate on what this means to the millions of foreign capital invested in wharves and docks and buildings on its banks.
Convinced of this, the Diplomatic Body at Peking inserted in the Peace Protocol signed at Peking on the 7th of September 1901 an anes Article (XI) providing for the es-the Board is nominally a patriotic The objection of the Viceroy to one. Its establishment withdraws from Chinese sovereignty fourteen miles of river and a strip of land four miles wide on each bank, There is little doubt that the Imperial Maritime Customs authorities have not been eager to urge the Viceroy'
out the provisions of the Protocol. They feel, and the feeling is natural, that they are competent to do the required wore. all the knowledge required is in their possession, if it were entrusted them with the necessary funds and it may reasonably be argued that it would have been better if the Protocol, instead of providing the elaborate scheme which has never blossomed, had provided simply that the work was to be done, and left the doing of it to Sir Robert Hart's thoroughly capable service.. Unfortunately, jealousy is not entirely unknown in Diplomatic breasts, and the Customs suffers from the imputation that it is too English, admirably impartial as Sir Robert is recognised as being,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.