'The official Government "Spri Holidays" have come and gone, the devoted people are now' just settling again to work and business after the finest celebration of the several years, good reason to be grateful to Nanking has every ember of. the "Government. that Suggested this way out of passe that bade fair to be a thorny Problem for many years to come.
For be it known to all, this "holiday" will be more devoutly ko than many another that set by mandate; for the end of the ¢ld and the beginning of the New Lunar Year will be. the greatest religious festival the people of this art of the country will observe til Something higher in, the religious fine, comes to fill their spiritual needs, Last year and the previous year they observed the days, though they were threatened by the police, as offenders, This year all reserve was thrown away, and the people openly and" joyously kept the festival with firecracker and with feasting, and all. kind of playing and pleasure, "And now they" ave back to their work again, happy are not nearly so bad as they might and. satisfied, feeling that thi have been, at the close of a war year, 'Thus for this city, and the same applies to all the large cities, from which word has been received during the past week, For the country one can only say' that whatever of joy, freedom to observe the New fea festival may have brought, it must be greatly modified by. the terrors that nightly' threaten them. The bandit menace was never more of a dread terror than itis at the prevent time. In all. the. border Jand, "north, south, "east and west the same kind of Stories reach us. 'No place is safe from the incursions ind hordes, They come. hundred, @ thousand, wd, or three' thousand, Their numbers are legion, Villages that for tons of years have never been troubled, may be visited any night, and the hones, therein left a smouldering, mass of ruins, after jai members of the community have been carried away for ransom, From one city in the southeast section of the province my corres. pendent' informed me that a band Of from two or three thousand spent few rest days in the city, and as they were well treated, orders: were sivan that nothing was'to be carried Away, and no people harmed. As Fesult only" a few comely maidens or young wives were taken from k this city. But a few li away from the city, where hospitality was not claimed, hamlets. were looted, and burned,' and many people carried away.
From another city in the East, a gentleman wrote me that they were comparative pence there, "there were no, bandits within ten Hot the city." "His letter had a Hing. of, sincerity on this point. Think of it! At peace with bandits in force, just three English miles "Pom the extreme south west of the province, from a district Where appeals for famine relief have come {0 the capital city, a friend writing fon. the aituntion said that, was indeed. desperate, but. not from natural causes at all: soldiers and Drigands have reduced the district a state of famine.
'And from a point within fifteen riles of the heart of the, province "the "railway" contre. of" Cheng-comes A lester from a Eandid observer, "who waxes. fearfully indignant,' ax he, continues, his description of conditions in. the hilly county" of Mi What was, such a very short time ago, tone of the most Zertile and content: fed. counties of. the province with Samiets every. fow i apart, is now desolation of vuing, and practical:
"Gopopulated.. First came. the Dndits, wave after wave of them only" "fifteen "English" miles away from the two trunk lines that ross this province, at Cheng burning, murdering a lucring. 'Ther came the foldiey' to. "protect" the. district, dnd what the bandits in their haste lets Inthe way of fondstufs, the soldiers in. a more. systematic' way. "tompimndeateg, 45 dhe pice of Dra. fection. So that now, with homes Gino, and_sustananée "gage, the country Ts left barren and depopu ated! winted just now drawing to. close, This is the more (pitiful, as the
Trs'though fa ite conte: ist the Amotine of snow that should prepare ihe furth in the finest kind of Way for the first crop of the year, the Spring crop of wheat. Farmers more favoured districts are. jubilant over, the, prospects for. their. wheat, Gnd the "prices. of floor in' this joteict axe showing symptoms of a sympathetic decline.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.