Feb, 24
'THR Municipal Gazette publishes, to-day, some correspondence' between the Council and the Chinese Chamber of Commerce to which some attention may be called. The Chamber had written to ask for special protection in the banking quarter of the Ningpo and Peking roads, in consequence of an armed robbery perpetrated at 9 bank in an alleyway of. that district Inet December. In reply the Council contends that the police can hardly be accused of want of promptitude in coming to the rescue, as an armed Chinese constable was actually on the spot within half a minute of the alarm, closely followed by others—in spite of, as subsequently appears, the delay caused by the alley gates being closed; and one of the robbers was arrested. To the Council's suggestion that banks should provide their counters with grills, the Chamber re-grots that this is not practicable and asks for more plain-clothes detectives and a local police depot. The Council's reply is a promise of the desired depot and an undertaking to arm and train the watchmen employed by the Bank Guild. The last letter contains a very cordial expression of the Chamber's thanks, together with full recognition of what has been and is being done for the bankers' protection. We wish to observe", the letter runs, "that we have no complaints regarding the work performed by the police force and the measures which have been adopted."
This last letter, in particular, ought to be read in connexion with the Captain-Superintendent's report for January which appeared last week, in that it shows the entire agreement of leading Chinese residents with Mr. McEuen's explanation of the state of crime recorded during that month. As compared with January, 1915, there were thirty-tone armed robberies against six. The number of bad characters attracted to the town by the recent abortive rising; distress consequent on the typhoon and the failure of rice and cotton by C,00gle Original from
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.