Peking, July 24
For the past week or 10 days the high authorities of Hsuan Tung's court have been trying to give the public the impression that the fire la the palace and the more recent dismissal of nearly a thousand eunuchs were events in no way connected. The impression that there was a very, close connexion between these incidents is, however, a difficult cne to correct and it is now coming to be believed that the assurance from the palace that the eunuchs were not dismissed because they had systematically pilfered the palace and had then fired it to cover their tracks, is simply designed in other words to give the purchasers of- stolen curios and valuable wood blocks a sense of security so that they will be careless enough to bring their treasures out of hiding.
It is reported in high Manchu circles that the allies off the eunuchs, who have been purchasing stolen goods for years, are a group of "foreigners'—nationality undesignated—living in the East City, but that, to avoid bad' feeling, no charges will be made until it is discovered whether or not these dealers still have in their possession property worth recovering. It is not believed that local Chinese dealers have tought anything worth while from the eunuchs, the origin of the goods being too wel! known arleng them and the risk of detection while disposing of them being too great. A palace officer says that nearly all the eunuchs under suspicion of participation in the pilfering were opium smokers or drug addicts and that they obtained their supplies of opium and drugs by trading curios for them as they had the opportunity to smuggle articles cut of the palace or as the need of drugs arose. Since the imperial store of curios was never properly catalogued.or valued and since the eunuchs were for the most part wholly ignorant of the merits or worth of the artjcles_ which they stole, priceless trinkets were frequently traded' for a few ounces of opium or a very limited supply of morphine or heroin. The writer's informant repeats the original charge that the palace was fired by the eunuchs the-night after the Emperor had given an order that the family treasures should be catalogued and that' each article should be photographed so that curios subsequently stolen and shipped abroad could be traced and identified. A results of the careful study of modern equipment and the experience gained from the construction of their predecessor, the Hosho. The work of conversion will be completed by 1925.—Reuter.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.