Gen. Chao in Power Again From Our Own Correspondent.
Changsha, Dec. 8.
I do not know whether this letter or my previous one will reach you earlier. Our incoming mails were delivered 27 hours late this morning and yesterday it was announced at the railway station that no train could go out till one had come in.
To-day's news is an astonishing turn-over from yesterday's. What I reported yesterday was perfectly correct: the officers stationed here had a meeting, they decided that Gen. Chao Hong-ti must go: they gave out as the pass word "Down with Chao"; the general was duly "downed" and his goods and belongings duly looted. His success sor was elected and his first proclamation (in which, by the way, he styles himself "Temporary Commander'" and not Commander-in-chief"), is a sort that seems to mean business: it informs all and sundry that anyone "buying" things without paying for them, will be shot at sight, and is understood by everybody to mean that the soldiers are to do nothing in the way of loot.
Now this morning a friend comes in to greet me with the astonishing announcement that the "downed" general has come "up" again. Gen, Chao it seems has returned io the Commander-in-Chief's office and is now commanding his quondam rebels. Talk to half a dozen level headed men about the situation and you get half dozen mutually exclusive accounts of what has happened, but only one about what, will happen next:—"T don't know."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.