Drunkenness became apparent the evening of the day that the monopoly went into effect, and it has been apparent ever since. And it was the moujik and the workman who were, from all appearances, doing most of~the drinking. The bourgeoisie laid in their little stock and brewed their vodka and liquors for Easter, as all Russians do: but if any of them got the worse for liquor this fact was not visible to the naked eye. The Siberian peasant, who must save in order to purchase the wherewithal for tilling his fields, is the one whose pocket-book, physique and energy are going to suffer from the alcohol monopoly. He is the backbone of his country, and his country needs him sober rather than saturated with vodka. One of these days the Government of the Far Eastern Republic will realize this and abolish the monopoly. It will, at the same time, have to set in motion. machinery calculated to make its prohibition laws effective. Li this does not happen, another Pussyfoot Johnson or Carrie Nation will have to come to Siberia to start an anti-vodka campaign with the magic spell of words or the blow of the saloon-smasher's axe. For the moujik must not have vodka.
Ons of the oldest members of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs Service has been removed by the death of Mr. Charles Hannen. He died on April 23 in London in his 90th year. During his long residence at many of the Treaty Ports in China he was a very well-known member of the foreign community. He was a brother of Sir Nicholas Hannen, formerly judge of Her Majesty's Court in Japan, and afterwards Chief Justice of the British Supreme Court in Shanghai.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.