"Satisfactory progress whole," say the "Big. Five," as, the Yerult_ of. "private. discussions" at Geneva. A later telegram speaks of" further private arrangements regarding Germany's armament of "Gisarmament. And last week we wore informed: of other private discussions between a number of Foreign Ministers—seven all told, we think—from which more vague ccommuniqués of generally: honeyed assurance were issued. The muontal workings of these great ones of the earth are curious. During tie war and especially in all the conferences after it on what Germany should oF could oF should not or could not pay, nothing became completely discredited as the official communique, which assured us that everything was for the est in the best of all possible worlds, but gave no details. The wide discrepancy between results and assertions naturally convinced everybody that the only thing to.be believed in these communiques was the exact reverse of what they said, Far better say nothing at all than try to fob the public off with sugar-plums which nobody will swallow. Within the League itself such secrecy will do still more harm, It is not forgotten how Germany s permanent seat on the Council was suddenly tacked on to a vote for increasing the number of non-permanent members, $0 a8 to satisfy France and Poland; and this was sprung on the League meeting with no adequate time allowed for discussion, r, Nansen and other representatives of the smaller Powers protested strongly against having matters secretly arranged beforehand by the big Powers and ther forced upon the whole Council, but evidently the lesson has not been Tearnt, At a time when the League their original owners, and notice given by the Paoshan District Magistrate to that effect, struck retrospective note. It recalled to mind the prophetic parable which was once told about the future: importance of the port of Woosung. There are doubtless some few still in Shanghai who remember when the odds were being mentioned in favour of Woosung over Shanghai as an eventual city of importance. The opening of the Shanghai Woosung railway in 1898, a_branch of the Shanghai-Nanking, served to buoy up these'old hopes also. While the lots in question, bought in 1908] by Chinese- who thereafter became the beneficial owners through registration with a firm of foreign lawyers who subsequently registered them at the British Consulate, can hardly be supposed to have in the general excitement of earlier time, it is possible that som such idea may have been in the back of their owners' heads.
Salubrious dreams about Woosung have apparently died through fault of their own, and the beneficial owners of the section of lots under discussion have likewise di appeared from view, the upshot being that public notice is made and another one of the endless Links in the chain of land booms formed. It becomes quite natural in the circumstances to conjure up conclusions about what makes one section of land grow into a metro. polis, while an almost equally good adjacent section languishes under the wistful cloud of an old land boom, that rose but to fall again.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.