And if force is to be used, is it to be Chinese or Foreign force? I do not refer to the suggestion made in your columns that 2,000 ex-Service men should appoint a leader and proceed forth at once from Shanghai to rescue the captives, sans guns, sans food, sans communications, sans everything. No doubt the Chinese soldiers might be graciously pleased to lend them rifles and ammunition: %o doubt Manna would fall from Heaven to feed them, and they would grow wings to reach the top of Paotzeku without risking the life of a single captive. I leave such suggestions to be worked out to a practicable scheme by your correspondent "Buittinkski." But it will perhaps appear to the community of Shanghai that to organize an expedition of foreign troops from Tientsin, Japan, Manila or Hongkong sufficient to make a certainty of success—that would be essential—might need some considerable time and might lead to an extremely complicated situation. There is undoubtedly a strong foreign opinion that the solution which offers the best hope both of securing the release of the captives within a reasonable time—as well as of discouraging a repetition of such outrages—is to hold the Chinese solely responsible, to tell them to go ahead and capture the brigands by force, having first informed the brigands, clearly what will happen to them and theirs if their captives are
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.