Jan. 18.
No upology is needed, we feel sure, for returning to the all absorbing question of China's army and the means by which it might be cut down. For this is certain, that there can be no peace; no settled order, no effective government in China until this has been done. For example, great preparations are being made for the election of a brand new parliament, wholly unconnected with anything that has gone before. But what is happening? Taeeaue is already rampant and even, whispered, bribery in the into ets of this party and that, each one of which, it may be safely assumed, is obscurely connected with some one in the back ground who wields military power. Be that so or not, it is what every Chinese will believe, and in any case no parliament can do anything while the rule of the sword prevails outside its walls ruthless and unchecked. The welfare, the very existence of China depends upon civil authority being reasserted over military. To that desire the genera] movement for local automony is largely to be ascribed. Only, it is ever the "id difficulty, which confronted the mice in Aesop's fable, of how to bell the military cat—with this important difference, that to-day
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.