February 2.
Tae interval in the publication the world's news due to the Chinese New-Year holidays has, unfortunately, brought no reassuring intelligence regarding the plague in the North. On the contrary we have to record the decision of the German Government not to allow the Crown Prince to come farther East than Calcutta, a decision that, it is clear, would not have been taken, unless those whose duty it is to keep the authorities in Berlin informed of conditions in the Far Bast had regarded the situation as most serious. It has to be remembered that the news of the plague now reaching us comes from the chief cities in the North, which were the first to be attacked. In these the presence of foreigners, with or without territorial jurisdiction, has led to more or less strenuous measures being adopted to combat the epidemic. Each town, however, has thought only of its own interests, and the most active steps have had no other end in view than to stamp out the plague in its midst or to keep it at a distance. The inevitable exodus of Chinese residents, provided they did not seek transport ion the railway, has been allowed to take place unchecked; and it is safe to infer that hundreds and thousands who have already been in contact with the disease have made their way to villages in the interior. Here the will be beyond the reach of all "plague measures," and the opi-domic, if once started, is likely to run its course with grim virulence. In such circumstances there could be no justification for allowing the heir apparent to the German Throne to pass through the infected reglons, nor, indeed, to add by his presence in Peking or elsewhere to
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.