Commenting, upon the resolve of Chang Tso-lin to hold up the Salt revenues of Manchuria, Reuter's Peking correspondent' expresses the belief that this particular Super-Tuchun is not likely to bring matters to a critical pass with the foreign authorities. This is probably quite a correct view, but as events have turned out up to the present there has been no need for him to do so. This, not because he has shown himself complaisant to any demands made upon him, but by reason of weakness or indifference on the part of foreign anthorities in China. Salt happens to be the second of two distinctly flagrant cases in Manchuria. In the first place there was his decision to prohibit all foreign bank notes within his territory, which he is understood to have enforced to some extent, in spite of foreign protests. As the matter, however, has not been seriously taken up by the Legations, he has not had te fight for the principle he has laid down. His success un to the present in this matter has doubtless encouraged him in his present attack on salt, but elsewhere it has. had an even greater effect, for Peking has now taken unau itself to consider the reliability of all foreign bank notes. So long as they merely talk. no arent harm will be done, buf when they see a man like Chang Tso-lin giving them an example of what he can do, they may take it into their heads to be really troublesome.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.