It is evident from what the Chinese offici" 1s state that they knew of the Hung Sheng silver shipments before the cars started if not before they issued the passes for Dolan Nor. It looks very much as though they laid a trap for the foreigners and when they had them in it allowed a dispute between soldiers and foreigners to rise to white heat without other instructions to their own men than that they should "prevent the cars from going. The foreigners may have known of the regulations pearing upon Chinese shipments of silver. They ave deliberately taken out passes for a town they did not intend to visit. If one follows the Chinese argument closely it is even conceivable that the consul knew of the regulations, knew ihat his nationals were violating it and knew that their passes did not cover their prospective trip (though this is pure hypothesis). Granting all of this for the sake of argument it has absolutely no bearing upon "Meng Hsing-ku'ei's responsibility for the shooting.
When Meng Hsing-kuei learned Mr. Wooden.
Whatever civil offence they. were committing—and! to official knolvledge was the trans-the sum of it)at the time according
rt of $15,000 for the Hung jheng Bank under passes for Dolan Nor—they were under foreign jurisdiction, thanks to our various treaties, and werd not subject to execution on any count. The offence was a civil offence which should have been referred to the proper American civil authorities, even over Mr. Sokobin's head, through the proper diplomatic channels. The Chief of Staff confesses that his yamen was in telephonic communication with the Soldiers throughout and it would seem that if he had the prescience of trouble which prompted him to send the Commissioner of Foreign Affairs and his aide to the scene, he might have had sufficient poise at the same time to instruct his soldiers to let the cars go on Mr. Sokobin's tesponsibilit}, holding the consul responsible before the Waichiaopu and the American Legation for whatever irregularities he thought were involved.
If the Chief of Staff had any faith in his own men he might have known, after the telephonic instructions which he sent them, that they would shoot if the cars went through and he knew from the Commissioner of Foreign Affairs that Mr. Sokobin was going to take the cars through. In short he deliberately allowed the altercation at Hsi Sha Ho, over which he was at all times in complete control, to develop into a tragedy without taking any of the several courses which might have prevented the tragedy.
The writer has made no attempt to suggest that the Chief of Staff; ordered the soldiers to shoot if the} year started. The fact that he did} mot give clear orders that - they were not to shoot when he knew that the foreigners were on their that an American consul was pre-way out with the contraband silver sent and that in the event of he might readily have sent a guard trouble he might be subject: to asto arrest them, consul and all if sault, is sufficient to put the bur-~mecessary. When he knew that the den of responsibility upon his consul was intent upon forcing the shoulders, Through neglect, or party through he might easily have incompetence or malice afore-"had the Commissioner explain to thought—and we shall never know the consul that a large portion of which was—he assumed the re-} the silver on the American cars sponsibility for the death of an! thing in Kalgan to support this im—pression. There was no evidence whatever to show that the civilian population was anti-foreign or that the soldiers were badly behaved. It would appear, on the other hand, that the men of the 4th Mixed Brigade are consistently paid, are well behaved and are on the whole a particularly wholesome, decent lot of fellows. The Chinese in all walks of life testify that they are a great improvement over their Fengtien predecessors, who were really rascals under a rascally commander. There is no evidenced therefore that the Coltman incident was the culmination ut a general tendency.
Mr. Coltman's death has pushed Mr. Wooden's part in the shooting incident into the background but it does not deserve to remain there. Mr. Wooden was one of the party, travelling in his own motor-car with $9,300 of his own money with which the Chinese, according ta treaty, had no right to interfere. The Chinese admit that his silver was his own because when he returned to Kalgan he was watched closely and it was observed that he redeposited this sum to his own account in the Bank of China, from which it had been drawn. This the Chief of Staff admits. Mr. Wooden was also fired upon and telephonic instructions were sent up the valley te stop him after he had left the second barrier, so-called. In other words violence and restraint were exercised, or would have been exercised, in the case of a foreigner going about his own legitimiute business. The Chief of Staff says that had he been in the yamen after Mr. Wooden returned to ascertain Mr. Coltman's condition and was pvt under arrest, he would have arrested him and detained him. He says this voluntarily and not as a reply to a question, thereby testifying that he was prepared even after the wounding of Coltman to exercise an arbitrary control over a foreigner who was going about nothing but his own legitimate business. When we consider this statement and digest it carefully it would seem that we have already used up entirely too much space in trying to fix the responsibility for Coltman's death.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.