Sept. 19. spite of assertions to the contrary, it is impossible to think of the £10,000,000 loan as being' anywhere but in the region of -things problematical. The story of its inception and preliminary arrangement, told in our Peking! correspondent's letter to-day, brings into strong relief the weak points of the whole transaction; and nothing has occurred since that letter was writtersto lessen the dubiety with which the loan is obviously received in the capital. Even the news of the payment of £500,000 as s preliminary instalment''—it will have been noted that our correspondent, in his telegram yesterday, did not speci-tically state that the money had been paid—does not affect the situation, until it is definitely mown where and how the money, has been paid over. So far as chu be ascertained, no payment has been made in China, and the stocks of silver in the hands of the banks outside the Six Power group remain virtually unchanged. It is, of course, possible that payment has been made to and received by the Chinese Minister London, in the teeth of the structions which his Excellency is supposed to have received by cable last Saturday. But in that case, such payment would surely have been accompanied by simultane ous instructions to some bank in China to deliver the corresponding amount to the Chinese Government. The best proof that no instructions of this nature have been sent is that the Six Power -group is still negotiating with the Government, as would certainly not be the case, if another organization were already paying out money to China.
Meanwhile, foreign opinion in Peking is much exercised about the probable behaviour of the British Government, not _altogether, it would seem, without some desire to put that unfortun ate body upon the horns of dilemma. In point of fact, however, there appears no necessity for the British Government to do more than it has done. Indeed if
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.