The significance of all this is that a second-hand threat has prompted the Chinese authorities to more action than all diplomatic representations of the past five years.* The unconfirmed reports from London indicated that one Power at least, if not all the Powers, know what the conditions on the Chinese railways were, that the Powers were preparing to tell China in plain English what they knew of conditions, and that they were preparing to take steps in direct, brutal, inelegant Occidental style to remedy these conditions. This in itself was enough to move such authorities as exist, in the very thick of their domestic troubles, to prompt remedial steps of a similar character.
in the Diplomatic Corps who say And yet there are people' with-that our moral resources have been exhausted and that we must have new authority and new sup-pox of a material character to ring Chinese officialdom to its senses. If an unsubstantiated telegraphic rumour makes sufficient impression upon a group of distracted Chinese political gamblers to move them to turn railway audit and what not over to a foreigner and a group of foreign subordinates, what would bond fide official representations through the proper official mediums and the proper official tone effect?
While the local community is ruminating upon this problem it is not hesitating to express its opinions upon the real worth of the suggested system for protecting the railways.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.