message "The than it is, and if by any chance the unloading of auch garbage boats as mentioned above could be part of who' United Staten, om the very eve tes, prevented it ters. T) boats evidently came would be helping mathe Tariff Conference, is, of course, ly" incom from one of the several municipaliprehensible that the this country. must be one of prisaled ineredull until ture ies of which Shanghai ly made up, ther information i an to the either direct or through a contractor 4 ant political influences who undertakes the work on behalf of the authorities. If any of the foreign rpunicipalities are concerned in'ity there Is, no doubt that they will be only too eager to stop the practice, and the river authorities might ce-operate to prevent any of the other bodies from pursuing such 8 course, tions which may possibly p. Public.
3 tery reluctant. to uch sation to the deliberate "decision confined Responsible ice, of course, realize lay so far as garded in Chinese eye: belief current that if it did not rain on that day, no rain would fall until Chinese New Year.
Foreigners have the very greatest respect for the Chinese as weather prophets, for the ancient lore which has been handed down to them, on! many occasions gives them almost an uncanny accuracy in their predict tions. Moreover the skies, days be-, fore and days after this particular date, held out no promise of rain, in fact we fancy that up to thet, point hardly more than " shower had fallen during five or six week The outlook was accordingly bad, for if the accuracy which had previously been shown were repeated on this occasion we were certainly in for a bad time. A repetition of certain periods of dust which have been the case here in the past can hardly be contemplated with equanunity, and these long spells of dry weather bring too much disease in their train to make one wish for them, Happily on this occasion the worst does not seem to have occurred, for at the time of writing, late afternoon, there have been sufficient drops of moisture to break the spell—at least, with all. due respect for to racing, one may hope go. Nevertheless we: must rot treat these views of the Chinese the subject of the weather. with respect. Our own legend. of St. pendent, ation on the pi ay the Powers participating in the Conference "in" Wkely to render the whole effort of the Conference mogatory. Thin w ply equally if the Proposed. Independent action were to the form either of abrupt rejec~ tion or of tolerant acceptance of the mands' presented "by" the Chinese As matters stand there appears n> opening for any special act of benevolence by Washington as all the.delegates in Peking appear to be united in giving away everything with both hands. The trouble will come when Peking itself—after {having duly kicked itself for cot asking more in the first placo—i creases its demands proportionately to the extraordinary readiness of the delegates to allow themselves to be diddied. And then it will-be question for the Powers whether they are to study the interests of the people of China or her politicians. If the former, the importance of absolute? unity of action cannot be over-rated.
The Scare at Ningpo So far as unfounded scares the present war has probably been more full of them than any of ita Predecessors, and it has done what some others have failed to do, produced @ first rate joke, Going back about a week, it will be remembered that the most convincing accounts came fo hand of & landing by the Fengtien troopd off the coast of Ghakiang not tar. from. Ningpo. Phis rumour held good vet hours, but was then discredited, a3 it was announced that the whole
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.