Oct. 3.
The fate of Tsingtao has a reality for British residents in the! Far East, an appeal to their sympathies, of a kind that no other phase of the war can offer. Galicia, Poland and East Prussia are for the majority, even in regions much nearer to them than China, mere geographical express sions. With Belgium and France we can do better in conjuring up some of the scenes of fighting, although distance, time and the fleeting nature of the first impression have combined to blur the sharpness of the picture. But Tsingtao and its broad and well kept roads, now splashed with fragments of shell and rutted with gun-carriage wheels; its wooded hills, where years of exquisite horticulture will be ruined by the duel between invader and invade ed; the rolling cornfields dotted with pretty hamlets, but now mined and fenced with live wire the calm sunset waters of the ba; now trembling to the roar of great guns—all these pleasant scenes, now distorted by the fury of war, have been familiarized by many a good holiday. And if this tiny outlying theatre of the world war is well known through the Far East, so are the men who occupy the tragic stage. It is well remembered how, when a wicked slander was published of the British Vice-Consul, the Governor of Kiaochou spontaneously wrote to the paper in question to' contradict the falsehood: and for' those who know the Governor, the act is typical. Under his) command to-day are thousands! with whom their present enemies! have dined and danced and lived on terms of intimacy and good fellowship. And thus Britons in the Far Bast have good cause to regret the doom that hangs over Tsingtao and its defenders, to whom the Kaiser's telegram offers) but the choice of deaths, by the enemies' hand or their own. There is no merey in Potsdam for Admiral Mever-Waldeck.
It is necessary to guard against false sentiment. Regret for the destruction of the amenities of Tsingtao, sympathy for the wretched plight of her garrison cannot be allowed to obscure the facts of the case. When the German Admiralty decided to make Tsingtao a thorn in the side of trade in the China seas, they
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.