Her Warlords Deepoiling Railways and Bringing Ruin Telegraphing on October 28 the New York correspondent of the "Times" reports:—In an address to the Chicago Association of Commerce yesterday Mr. Silas H. Strawn, chairman of the International Commission on Extra-'Territorial Jurisdiction in China, declared that that country now no longer had any responsible Gov-Jernment, and through the greed and desire for aggrandizement of the war lords was rapidly being redue-to impotence and misery.
The railways (said Mr, Strawn) were rapidly falling into ruin be-Jeause the whole of the 7,000 miles the system were dominated by the military, who gave no attention to equipment or maintenance, 19 years militarists had taken $180, }000,000—$250,000,000 counting _interest—of railway earnings. When not being used for the movement lof the troops their use was sold to shippers at exorbitant rates. The squeeze" demanded for the use of goods wagons was $5 per ton, in addition to the freight rate," Wa Pei-fa was collecting. $1,000,000 month from the Peking-Hankow Railway, while Chang Tso-lin is takting the' revenues of the Peking-/Mukden Railway. None of the em-Ployees had been paid for months.
Since April (when the Kuomin-Jchun evacuated Peking) there had been no Government in China. Outside Peking no regard was paid to the orders or wishes of the so-callled Regency Cabinet. For a year! the whole country had been overrun bandits and soldiers, The forjeign Legations were unable to secure redress from the Central Government for wrongs done to their rationals in any part of China. China one heard much of the "coforeign" rights of the Chinese Republic but Chinese politicians did!
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.