Probably the most significant. omission from the report of the Salaries Com lion which was noticed in this column on Monday last is the failure to give any indication of what the recommendations will cost the ratepayers. It does not seem unjust in the circumstances to suggest that the Commission appears to have paid attention to discovering how much the municipal employee ought to receive as remuneration for hi and to have ignored the necessity for giving an indication as to how much more has to be found to carry out the recom. mendations. It is by no moaria easy to extract such information from the report, but sufficient data are available from which some ided may be obtained of what the International Settlement is paying in individual cases for the services rendered, to it, The figures given below, of the Empire throwing off the|p, ein government loans, and in some instances, owing to lack shackles of the-past astonished the world, but it did not last long. The end came when Kuang Hsu entered into a conspiracy to seize the person of the Empress Dowager and end her dominance for good, but he was betrayed, by Yuan Shih-kai, the Emperor always claimed. The Empress Dowager acted with characteristic firmness and decision. She had the Emperor seized and conveyed to the Ying Tai, or "Ocean Terrace," A palace on a small island in the Forbidden City which was his St. Helena.
The "Ocean Terrace" is a fairyland of an abode, on an island surrounded by three other beautiful palaces known as the Sen Palaces, built by Ming artists whose works beautified China. It was there that Kuang Hsu lived during tue period of the Empress's pleasure, robbed even of the company of Chen Fei, or the Pearl Conet bine, his favourite, who was eventually thrown down a well by the orders of the Empre: It was there that he also died in 1908. When the Nanking bomb dropped it must have stirred up a host of memories, tra-gie and splendid, for the intrigues and failures of the last days of the Empire were enacted in those surroundings, but none could be so tragic as the thought that the republican heirs to tie Empire should ruthlessly wish to destroy its beauties.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.