January 21.
SueKers after contrasts have never far to go in China for their subjects. Street scenes to-day in any part of the country will supply a variety in the material world; a stady of Government activity or official records will fulfi the same purpose in another sphere. The attempt to superimpose a constitutional regime on the existing conditions in China may well prove no less prolific in incongruities. Yesterday we were able to announce certain modifications of the constitutional programme that had secured the approval of the Throne. All the phraseology of modern representative government is to be reproduced in Peking, and the opening of Parliament is to be anticipated by the institution of a Cabinet, an Advisory Council and a Privy Council. In the same issue our Notes on Native Affairs tell of a contemporary incident as far removed from the conditions associated with an organized state as the first aeroplane to be seen in Shanghai will be in principles of locomotion from the wheelbarrows on which many Chinese will be conveyed to watch its flights. Within fifty miles of this port a band of refugees from the famine-stricken districts of north Kiangsu, several hundreds in number, roams at large over the country, plundering and killing. Their depredations are regarded at first in the light of an inevitable occurrence, and only when they exceed the litnits which a long-suffering populace conceives to be prescribed for lawless people is any attempt made to put a check to their proceedings. Even then the villagers take the matter into their own hands, and mete out a punishment particularly Chinese in its grim callousness. After eight or nine days, when the fortunes of, this civil conflict are inclining against the forces of law and order, an appeal is made for official assistance.
The incident is eloquent of For more than a month large num-present conditions in this country.
bers of needy people are said to have been committing excesses in the neighbourhood of Kunshan, which lies between Soochow and Shanghai. A fortnight ago they were reinforced by some five hundred refugees from the northern portion of the province, who introduced more violent methods of procedure in obtaining means of sustenance. If the reports are to
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.