Peking, Jan. 17.
All local interest in politics has} been transferred to the South. Sua Yat-sen's promise to do for the Southwest what the Tientsin faction has done for the North opens! up vistas of confusion and chaos much move diverting than the pranks' of Parliament or the hitherto vain efforts to! patch together a Cabinet. Persons who are usually very well informed upon affairs in Peking profess complete ignorance of what! ly going on here on the ground that they are too disgusted to make inquiries. The local press is full of stories of bribery in Parliament and of the demands made by the legislators for back pay before they are ready to pass upon the various Cabinet appointments. No one reads these accounts through _because there is no prospect of Parliament's doings leading anywhere.
The parliamentary ink slabs are now screwed to the desks and all the furniture is made fast to the floor, so the members are reduced to rhetoric'in their feuds on the floor. A few days ago a party of angry members discovered that the chairs reserved for Cabinet members! were not made fast and these pieces of furniture played a part in a picturesque skirmish, the accounts! of which were read with consider-of the country were to meet and elect Tsao Kun or anyone else, the constitutionalists and all others who justify declarations of independence and military adventures on grounds of "legality," would have a splendid excuse for defying Peking and for putting the President in the same position which Hsu Shih-chang occupied. For these various reasons it is assumed that unless Tsao Kun's supporters are prepared to abandon their ambitions altogether, they must make an effort to have the presidential elections held before the end of April. Out of such an effort, it ig confidently believed, will grow a very bitter feud between all the military leaders in North China and the Yangtze Valley.
Another quite different line of speculation has to do with finances. One hears the opinion widely expressed, of course, that neither this nor any other Cabinet will be able to get through the critical New Year season. This opinion has been widely expressed, however, every year for the past five years. Though no one can indicate the source of revenue that will be available to the Government by February 15, no one experienced in Chinese affairs is willing to predict with assurance that the New Year season will be the season of the grand collapse. It is dated a. little further ahead and the writer has encountered many so-called authorities who say. that it will happen sometime in Apri]. It would appear that April and May may be livelier months in Peking.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.