Sept. 30.
No apology is needed for returning again to China's breaking off of relations with the Russian representatives. Complacently as some (unspecified) persons, in the dreamy recesses of Legation Quarter, are said, by Reuter's correspondent, to contemplate the affair, there are people in other parts of China who regard it as unquestionably one of the most serious occurtences on record between China and foreign nations. No protestations of the Waichiaopu, no honeyed phrasing of Presidential mandates can alter the fact that it is not the same for foreigners io be "'protected" by a Chinese official as by their own nationals that such protection is not only not in harmony with extraterri torial rights, but is fat violation of them; and that if the blow thus aimed at Russians in China he not quickly countered and their extraterritorial) status fully secured, the other Powers will very soon have cause to regret their shortsightedness. What treaty is safe if this breach of faith on China's part passes unchallenged?
We have already an example of how much Peking's promises are worth. While the President's secretaries were penning that. pledge of the Mandate: "The life and property of all peaceful Russian residents are etititled to due protection," Chinese soldiers. were tearing down the Russian flax over the Russian Concession in Tientsin. And while the Chinese Provincial Commissioner was preparing to master the contents of all the archives in that Concession, which he had, the previous day, annexed in the name of protection, the Waichiaopu was communicating to Reuter's correspondent its promise about ''the smallest possible interference. with the present administration of Russian Concessions.""
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.