Melbourne, Dec. 13.
The Houre of Assembly has pas ed the third reading of a Bill estabishing the totalizator on race courses.—Reuter. merely awaiting somebody whom to negotiate. The British Government had kept the United States, Japan, France, and Italy aware of every development of our policy in the past two years and had done their best to harmonize their views. "This meant that the slowest sot the pace.
He disagreed with the suggestion] that we ought to have a special agreement with Japan to settle the Chineie problem, for that would be contrary to the Washington Four-Power Treaty and the other Powers, that were represented at the Washygton Conference would have a justifiable grievance. Britain was prepared to grant China tariff autonomy; we already had granted her the Washington surtaxes, spite of the opposition of practically all the Powers, especially Japan. We were prepared to surrender} Weihaiwei directly we had somebody, to negotiate with. An agreement} already was drawn up; we simply wore waiting for an_ established authority to whom to hand it.
The Situation Now Worse Mr. Locker-Lampson added that! at present we were ce-operating with the chief Powers at Peking, with hopeful prospects with regard to the Bias Bay pirates. He pointed, out the impracticability of referring the question of China to the League. At present, the position in China appeared to be wore than a few months ago, owing to the number} of conflicting leaders. The changing and shifting scene accentuated the difficulties of our attempts to negotiate.
Therefore, the only solution was patience. We would troops directly some ind of order! was evolved and some sort of Goyernment was able to exercise a kind of control.
Commodore King, winding. up the debate, said that, when the reduc~ tions were completed, the troops swould not exceed 13,000,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.