Right Reserved to Collaborate for Protection of Shipping Should China Fail Peking, Mar. 10, The Diplomatic Body's note was handed tothe Walehinopu this afternoon, M. Oudendijk, the Senior Minister, on behalf of his colleagues, earnestly draws attention to the fact that according to statements of the local Chinese authorities Tientsin, a series of ten electrically controlled mines has been placed in the Taku Channel near the Spit Point Buoy, where the channel is, only 600 feet wide, and that. pilots have been notified that shipping will not be allowed to come in oF out. The port of Tientsin is thus completely closed to the sen, If further appears, the note con+ tinues, that the Tsingtao naval ex. pedition and the Kuominchun forces stationed on the site of the south Taku forts continue to be engaged in an artillery dud, which of ite self prevents safe navigation of the Taku Ghannel, while the hostilities between the Kuominchun and the Fengtien forces have caused the railway to be cut between Tientsin and Chinwangtao.
In these circumstances communications between Peking and the 96 are entirely interrupted in violation of the provisions of the Protocol of 1901. The diplomatic represen-tutlyes aforementioned protest most urgently against this state of affairs and demand that the Government of China bring about immediate cessation by both mutually hostile factions and armed forces of China of these acts of obstruction to open communication to the sen through the Taku Channel, reserving to themselves to collaborate for protection of foreign shipping and the maintenance of free access to the port of Tientsin should the Chinese Government fail to take, forthwith, action to.that end in fulflment of the purposes of the Protocol of 1901.—Router's Pacific Service.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.