Exouim news has now arrived from Wuchang to give a fairly clear view of the situation; and with all allowance for possible exaggeration there would seem no question that the revolution has attained the most serious dimen-us. To take first the facts about which there is no dispute. Wuchang is absolutely in the rebels'
li ite of such small rejdenced by the firing still heard yesterday, as has been maintained by the few Joyal troops; and to all intents and purposes the handful of Chinese gunboats and an insignificant nam-beret troops are all on which Viceroy Joi Cheng can for the moment rely. Later telegrams, much d puted as will be seen elsewhere, but now apparently beyond question, state that the rebels have crossed the and gained possession of Hanyang and that they have entered Hankow, evidently with the intention of cutting the railway, in order to prevent troops arriving from the north. From the outset the rebel leaders have been at the utmost pains to show that the movement anti-dynastic and not anti-foreiga. Punishment of death is threatened to anyone doing injury to foreign life or property. Still, the Government should be able to count upon the strict neutrality of the foreign concessions, whatever that may be worth in view of the organization which the rebels appear to possess. With the revolutionary forces practically supreme in the strategic centre of the Yangtze Vally, and the loyalty of the troops at all times a doubtful quantity, the balance of odds is at present heavily against the Manchus. One small point has yet to be satisfactorily explained, namely, whether the three men whose beheadal precipitated the outbreak were revolutionaries or soldiers. If the latter, we may asmume that the trouble began in an ordinary mutiny and that the revol Intionaries took advantage of the occasion, more or less as an afterthought. But if the executed men were revolutionaries, then the inference is that their comrades, at a toment's notice and as a desperate alternative to the complete failure
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.