W. Godfrey for the defendants.
Evidence was given by the plain—tiffs' manager at Canton to the effect that as a result of the publication of the alleged libel they had lost the confidence of the educated classes in Canton, their business being for the larger part concerned in the sale of educational text books.
The plaintiffs' assistant manager in Foochow said that Shanghai newspapers circulated there quite freely and as the result of articles appearing in them the students came to the shop looking for evidence of Japanese interests. In August of this year witness heard that handbills were being circulate ed in Amoy stating that the plaintiffs had Japanese shareholders and carly in September witness went to that port and obtained two copies of the handbill from a friend. Later, together, they. visited the defendants' selling agent there and witness obtained a large quantity of the handbills, which were handed to him by the defendants' selling agent with a request that he should distribute them. He also purchased a booklet in which the original alleged libel was printed and found that there was no correction published therein.
Witness spoke to the effect of the story upon the sales of his branch and said that while in the early part of the year the sales were normal, September of this year as compared with the same month of last, showed a falling off of $2,900.
The assistant manager of the plaintiffs? Tientsin branch spoke to the appearance of notices referring to the alleged published libel, posted in places where there were not usually posters. He saw the spector of police there and asked leave to post his own sheet next to it, but this was refused. How. ever, when he explained the reason of his request, the inspector gave orders for the poster to be torn down. There were also pasted up copies of newspaper articles referring to the same subject, with red ink circles drawing attention to the more important passages. Handbills hanmful to the plaintiffs were also distributed.
As a result of all this the No. 3 Girls' School at Tientsin returned all the books they had purchased from_ witness:—400 in_ all—while the Normal School for Girls who had
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.