MOMENT, Ir is no wonder that the man-curing for the formation of a provisional government and the fluctuating course of the peace negotiations are watched on al sides with eager anxiety. To foreign circles, we may believe in Chinese also, there is a feeling that crucial moment has been reached in the story of the revolution, and that every day now through which the terrible conflict is allowed to drag its weary length must put the chances of settlemoot farther and farther off. From every quarter of the Empire comes news of unrest, shortage of money and open lawlessness. We do not underrate the merit of the republican party in securing a large measure of order in the towns, although it must be remembered that those people are easily kept in order who have themselves everything to lose by outbreak of disorder and that there was, practically. no outward change government.
Bat in the open country, among villages and hamlets it is evident, and not in the least surprising, that the revolutionaries cannot expect to control those elements of general unrest and li security which spring up, pari pass, with the growth of civil war. There are those who at any time would seize the opportunity of the relaxation of authority to plauder and ravage. There are those whom the floods of last summer and autumn have stripped of all that they possessed. And there are others, how many yet we cannot even guess, to whom the war has brought, directly or indirectly, stark beggar. Every available penny is being thrown into the war chest, and whatever is left is being boarded against a not impossible It is necessary d of absolute extremity; certainly to speak plainly. If the apparent' it is not being put into the ordinary triumph of the Empress-Dowa-channels of trade. Even in wealthy ger implies the continuation of Shanghai the war levies are begin-what is signified by the phrase ning to awake discontent; how petticoat influence, the latest piece much more heavily the pressure of Imperial penitence is foredoomed must be felt in less favoured centres to disappointment as conspicuous as ma y be well imagined. Already that of any of its predecessors, while the position of Yuan Shih-the injudicious haste with which provincial taxation was abolished is
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.