Oct, 18.
THE situation on the northern boundary of the Settlement, though outwardly calm enough, remains one of much anxiety The men entrenched beyond) Markham Road Bridge, whose numbers were reduced on Thursday by 1,500 men (not 2,000 as erroneously stated by us yesterday) sent reinforced yesterday by as many) men brought back from Woosung. Some of these at the moment of writing are at the North Station; the majority have gone to the entrenched camp at Markham Road. Exactly what terms the men are demanding we do not know, but they are as yet quite) beyond.the disposition of the Kiangsu' commanders to grant. Yesterday afternoon representatives of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce were to see their! leaders and try to bring them to reason, But the men have plenty' of arms and ammunition; they are sore at having been fired upon by the Kiangsu troops Nanziang on Tuesday; and their mood is not conciliatory. Then' we are faced with the unpleasant prospect that General Bei Bao-shan has said pi ly that if the Markham Road men will not hear reason, he must clear them out) by force.
In this predicament there are certain measures most essential to be taken. First and foremost) is that there should be a military occupation of Chapei by the Kiangsu forces. If this has not! been. done yet, it is probably because General Chang Yuen-min, who was sent on Tuesday with the Hupeh Mixed Brigade to take charge of Lunghua, was uncertain how far his commission entitled him to act. But the arrival of General Bei Bao-shan yesterday morning in Nantao, not to mention Colonel Wang Kuo-pang, Chief of Shanghai and Woosung Police, definitely settles that district, "At the present time there is no authority in Chapei whatever. In Nantao and Lunghua there are plenty of Kiangsu troops and if more were needed they could easily be brought in from Sungkiang; but these districts are not seriously threatened.—Chapei, however, is defenceless. In any, circumstances this is most undesirable; looting is not wholly unknown, indeed some of the villages beyond the Rubicon Road are said to have suffered rather badly. If it came to a fight at Markham Road, the.results for Chapei in its present state would be disastrous. It is of the utmost importance that General Bei Bao-shan should occupy the district, in force, and without
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.