The narrative of events makes a Picturesque story. At the Peking end we find a beginning made nearly fortnight ago by the acting Premier and the Minister of Finance, calling together upon a member of the Sextuple Group and informing him that the Government desired to resume the loan negotiations. China was prepared with a scheme and wanted to know if the! bankers would consider_—it.
After due consultation—_ the bankers replied through the member approached that they were ready to consider any proposal, on the basis of the terms previously required, namely, supervision of expenditure and control of security.
Next came a telegram from London on Saturday morning, August 31, announcing the existence of a dark plot to deprive the Group of its impending business. The first member thereupon demanded an explanation from the Minister of Finance, who replied that he himself, the Finance Minister, had only just heard of the negoti ions in Lon-These, he said, had been carried on by Hsiung Hai-ling, through the Chinese Minister in London, without the knowledge of the Department and he declared that the Minister in London had not been authorized by the Government. He stated, however, that a preliminary agreement had been signed and that the transaction was on the point of completion. He professed indignation with Hsiung Hsi-ling and declared his intentions of cabling to London to stop the negotiations.
So much for the dealings of the Group with the Chine: Government. Now for the dealings of the Chinese Government with the outside parties, The Progress of Preliminaries.
Information, it may be said, is not complete, but enough is here to make the situation plain. On July 12 a preliminary agreement was signed in Peking between the Chinese Government and a foreign agent who proposed to provide a sum of £10,000,000. It is not material who signed the agreement on behalf of the Government, for it is known that everybody concerned from the President downward was cognizant of the proced-ings. But it is characteristic of Chinese methods that the negotiations that led to the signing of this agreement and the subsequent negotiations in London were tensibly carried on by the special finance committee formed when Hsiung Hei-ling, now presiding over the committee, resigned the portfolio of Finance, while the Sextuple Group was approached by the new Finance Minister and the acting Premier. These last-named:
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.