Peking, Sept. 24.
The following is the full text of the reply of the Chinese Government to the Note on the Lincheng affair presented by the Diplomatic Body last month:—M. lo Doyen.—With_ reference to the Note of the Diplomatic Body of August 10 relative to the Lincheng incident which Your Excellency handed to me on the same day, and of which an acknowledgment was made in due course, I have the honour to inform Your Excellency that the Chinese Government have given their most careful consideration to the contents of the said communication. The fact that it is a collective Note signed by all the Chiefs of Missions of the Diplomatic Body, including those Powers whose nations were happily not found among the victims of the unfortunate incident, has impressed them with a sense of its added importance.
The deplorable incident resulted from the attack of a large body of brigands during the night of May 5-6, 1923, upon an express train of the Tientsin-Pukou line near Lincheng, on the border of the Shantung Province. According to the findings of the Chinese and_ foreign mixed commissions appointed for the purpose, it appears that the bandits had clandestinely moved the fishplates off certain rails near the scene of the incident, caused the train to be derailed about 2.50 a.m. on May 6, indiscriminately plundered passengers and train employees alike, killed one foreign national, and carried a number of other foreigners, along with more than 100 Chinese, into captivity.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.