'THERE is, or there was a theatrical conipany in London that was} Known by the taking title of Cooptimists. We believe it had its origin in the fertile brain of one of a company of actors who found himself out of an engagement. Knowing many others in the same predicament he suggested the for-motion of a ce-operative company. which, by its successes, has vindicated the hopeful name chosen for it by its founders. The delegates to. the tariff conference, now sitting in Peking, must feel somewhat like the ce-optimists. The success or! failure of their labours hangs, Wke the sword of Damocles, by a hair and yet they continue their sessions as unmoved as the Roman Senators when Brennu sacked the Imperial City. - This attitude has much to commend it, If we may believe. the reports current in Chinese circles the moderation of Chang Tso-lin, Aho atill adheres to his Fabian policy, and the non-intervention of Feng! Vu-hsiang is due to a desire that! the Conference may finish its Inbours. Dr. Wang Cheng-ting! 43 chairman of the Conferen: and he is, if not Feng Vu-hsian; henchman, at least, in very close touch with him, Feng and Chang have adopted the Conference, They have sent delegates to it and made public their belief that its outcome will be for China's! ood, but Wu Pef-fu has denounced it and all its works. The! fact that the Government _has issued a mandate denouncing Wu! and his ally Sun Chuan-fang] cerns to indicate two thin; First, that there is to be] no clash between Feng Yi hsiang and Mukden. and _second, that the Central Gov. ernment believes that the de-sultry war now proceeding will either be soon settled by a compromise or that in the event of the struggle being prosecuted in earnest, Chang and Feng will combine their forces and the combination will be irresistible. 'Tuan and his cabinet, we are told, have all their resignations written out and if the Southern troops actually win a real, not paper, victory' they will immediately admit their offences and seek refuge in one of the Concessions at Tientsin, The Conference has thus had 8 restraining influence on the! precut war mania, and if nothing else is accomplished, it has this much to its credit. It is well that the delegates should have seen China in one of her, to use Dr. 'Arthur Smith's word, convulsions. Would that their vision might be strengthened to see over the Legation walls and visualize the loss! that even this, comparatively, Dloodless strife has inflicted on China, They might" then be the' better able to compute the! disaster the country. is threaten. ¢0 with through its ceaseless tur-foil. Foreign trade, for the time being is dead. The railways, the arteries of communi: ation between the ports and the interior, sare blocked": with—the fiankpoit'' of" military stores,
chant-in-an inland city is going! Ben wore not $9, v9 mer to buy stock when, any day, his shop may be looted either by the soldiery or the bandits.—The foreign merchant must resume the well practised attitude of waiting—and even waiting is expensive—for better times. Disappointing as war is to him, he knows nothing by experience of the misery it inflicts on tens of thousands of innocent Chinese. There are the coolies roped in by the press gang. They are dragged off to work for little or, more likely, for nothing, "while ' their] families at home face intensified privation in a life that is all pri vation. We have not heard that any one of the Students or Labour Unions has entered a protest or sought to mitigate the hard lot of these unfortunates. Our Wuchang correspondent sends us graphic account of the disillusionment that came {o the people of Wuhan, They had welcomed! Wu Pei-fu like a conquering hero! bringing them peace with honour, but even Marshal Wu cannot fight: without money to buy the food that will enable his army to march on its stomach. He requests the Chambers of Commerce and ome other organizations to provide him with so many millions, Naturally, they demur, but, what] will ye? War is an insatiable monster that devours the bodies and souls of men. The soldier must be fed, clothed and armed whatever happens to the rest of the population. And so millions are "requested" from Hankow, millions from Shanghai and more millions from the other cities under the domination of the military leaders. Crest verve, War, pestilence famine; that is the script order, the three! grim spectras make their unwell come appearance again. Where do the "millions" come from? the toiling peasantry, in the last] resource, and so the war consumes the, food that men should eat! and tha clothing little children should wear. It is no use hoping that as peace comes there will be a boom in trade as the country fs denuded of the stock of things the people need. The country is denuded also of its! purchasing power.
'The money, that would have been spent in' providing a handsomer outfit for the bride or a more elaborate funeral for the old man whose coffin has been long awaiting a lucky day for interment has gone to buy powder and shot. The voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride are less vocal on' count of the war. For ware are defrayed by eliminating the) comforts, the little luxuries and the harmless joys of the common. people,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.