Oct. 5.
Atrocities by China's unpaid soldiery are so common, remedy appears so impossible in the present state of her misgovernment, that it is to be feared many of na have come to "'pass by on the other side'? when such tales are told, not from lack of sympathy but' because the thing seems simply incurable. But the account given to-day by our Tsangchow correspondent of the depredations of Lung Chi-kuang's brutal marauders in Chibli is so moving, so terrible in its simplicity, that we are constrained once again to appeal. for the exercise of some power from without in the name of common humanity. The article gains in force by the studious moderation of the language. There is no dredging of the dictionary for adjectives.'' Here are facts so ugly, that no dressing up can make them more impressive. It seems well nigh incredible that the Tuchuns and Governors of China, who are probably kind fathers and dutiful sons like all Chinese, can be so dead to all sense of shame where the public are concerned as to permit these horrors.
For us Westerners, accustomed to the secure enjoyment of our possessions and a strong arm of the law to shield us against lawless attacks, it is dificult to form any idea of what the people of China daily endure, not only in Chibli, but in Shantung, Szechuan, Hunan, Kuangtung, and many other districts, absolutely without defence or remedy. may get some conception of it, however, by imagining that at the conclusion of the Great War, Field-Marshal Haig and his generals, having brought back their troops to Dover, Newhaven, Southampton, etc., left them there without pay, food, barracks, clothing or anyone to control them, while they themselves hurried off to London to intrigue for place and money. We have also to imagine that Parliament was a nonentity or worse and that the Cabinet Ministers had no other occupation but to fill their pockets from the public purse and to find sinecures for their friends and relations. And then we have to imagine these troops, left utterly uncontrolled and unprovided for, being allowed to roam about the south of
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.