Feb. 22.
When in 1846 the famous 'French missionary, M, Hue, with his companion, Pere Gabet, was expelled from' Lhasa and sent under escort to Canton, one of the first sights they saw was French ship in the harbour flying the tricolor; the sight stirred their emotions that they fell into each other's arms and embraced. Most of us, though Voluntary exiles, experience a Similar thrill when, on our first furlough, we see from the ship's @eck the familiar landmarks of our native soil. Tt was with! hardly less pleasure that we saw, during the past few days the sailor lads and "Tommies" on their march through the Settlement. Most of us, in our' Doyhood days, have yearned to yun off to sea and some few have accomplished the feat, to their {nstant disillusionment, though, Yor ever after, their eyes will flash at the sight of "a tall shi and a star to steer her by. very body wants to be a sold-jer and the boy in the heart of the old man thrills again at the sight of the uniform he has worn only in his dreams. So the Schoolboys on the race course threw their caps in the alr when they saw the troops go marching past and those of us who] were too staid to follow their example felt our fingers itch, to]
likewise. If report be true, there were, too, certain buxom! matrons whose looks betrayed that they were back in girlhood days when, heart whole and free, they idealized them ives in the part of "the lass that loved a sailor.
'We see these feelings finding} unconscious' expression in our} columns when a correspondent Writes suggesting that the sold-Yor bands should be invited to play to us the national airs that) ent the blood galloping through our veins in the days before our arteries hardened into mere channels for conveying a certain May we ask our Chinese readers to make an effort to appreciate ours? We have endored for the past two years an _anti-British' boycott and anti-British propa~ ganda that has been beyond [words mendacious. As a result hundreds of missionaries have been driven from their stations' and are now taking refuge here. Kiukiang has been looted and Hankow is ruined. There is a retreating army falling back on the Settlement and a victorious army pressing on its rear. If these demoralized troops were! allowed to enter the city there, {is nothing more certain than that Shanghai would suffer as other places have suffered and our Chinese fellow residents need not delude themselves with the idea that the rich merchant. stores and banks owned by them would escape the fury of the! mob, The British Government, Has decided that it will fulfil its duty to its nationals and it is: unlikely that other governments will fail in theirs. Therefore! the troops are here with enmity towards none but with the firm determination that peace and order shall be maintained. We! ido not doubt that in the South-fern, as in the Northern commands, there are many who would deplore the manifesta~ tion of such scenes here as were witnessed in Hankow but these Jmen would be powerless in the face of the anarchy that would ensue. We hope and trust that there will be no conflict and that the troops will march away' amidst scenes as peaceful those they witnessed when they came amongst us, but the haz~ lard is too great to allow us to be unprepared and gamble with ithe lives of thousands of peacefal residents in Shanghai.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.