Oct. 9.
Tax announcement that the Japanese have arrived in Tsinanfu and taken control of the railway. ie not necessarily incompatible with the amicable arrange-: ment, as previously reported, for the management of the line; and! it cannot but be regretted that! China should so hastily have treated it ae such, by lodging a protest with the Japanese Lega-' tion. The amicable arrangement, it will be remembered, was that the Japanese should take temporary charge of the railway and put Japanese guards on the trains, but that the Chinese should manage the traffic. How, it may be asked, could such control be exercised when more, than half the railway, from Weihsien to Tsinanfu, was in other hands? We do not propose to go back all over the: ground of Japen's explanation to China of her occupying the railway. The salient points of it, our readers will remember, were that the railway is to all intents and s a German concern, fact sufficiently proved by the agreement; that it has been used since the outbreak of war for the strengthening of Tsingtao, breach of China's neutrality; and that a railway is inherently completed whole, which cannot be treated as divisible for purposes of war. Only the most wilfully blind have failed to recognize the reasonableness of] this contention. More than this, the present condition of Tsinanfu, with its numbers of Germans in residence, as described two da; ago by our special correspondent; constitutes a real danger in the! Japanese rear. Those Germans are quite clever enough to use the railway as near Weihsien as they can, get in order to annoy the enemy, and it would only ibe natural that they should try to, do so. Tt is equally natural that the Japanese should wish to Protect.themaelves.
With the lengthy _interpeDstion addressed to Resident Yuan}
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.