Hence the wail of protest from scores of practical people whose "vested interests" prompted them to prod the diplomatic folk into congenial compromise. They now want to know why the foreign Ministers cannot stand on their legs and defend their prestige. They want to know why a Minister who cannot get his Government to back him in a radical course docs not resign rather than consent to enter into a bargain in which he might hava known that the Oriental mandarin would get the best of him. Chagrin, in other words, has rendered articulate the hitherto voiceless spirit of gloom which has pervaded the Pe-King Club since the bar was closed for improvements.
Truly, it is to laugh! Tsao Kun is recognized. The Lincheng demands are acknowledged in an oily note which seems to grant everything but which puts forward such subtle qualifications that it all comes to the Diplomatic Body as an act of grace. Tien Tsung-vii is dismissed with an apotheosis. The railway police scheme is accepted in the language of a wily widow cajoling tips out of a galvanized bookmaker. And we're all where we were before, except thit Tsao Kun is internationally recognized as the infallible spokesman for 22 provinces and a couple of nominal dependencies, most of which are putting: phenomenal energy into the ery: "He isn't!"
Now let us squat on our haunches and! decide where we are. In the words of the proletariat we have to admit to ourselves that: "We ain't nowhere." In short it 1s about time to forget Peking. Nothing that can happen in this stately capital until spring can work us much further profit or ruin. The diplomats have, as usual, done their best and their worst. Dead dogs, like armies, are not very demonstrative in north China in winter-time.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.