Federation kindly sends us copies of two letters addressed to the Ministers of Great Britain and the United States in Peking, with the request that we will publish them: which we must regretfully decline to do as they are based on misunderstandings both of which were cleared up before the letters were written. That to the American Minister protests against the alleged American loan to Peking of G.83,. 000,000 on the security of the Kiangnan Docks. This rumour was emphatically contradicted in these columns last week, as having not the slightest foundation, by the Kiangnan Dock people, after careful inquiry. The letter to the British Minister states that the Governor of Hongkong recently went to Peking to negotiate an extension of the Kowloon leased territory and, in return, "that he pledged the British Government to assist the Kuangsi forces in their attack on Kuangtung troops. Ag a result, (the letter goes on) we learn that four British war vessels are transporting ammunition to Wuchow." The statement that the Governor went to Peking true; the slander that British gunboats were taking arms to Kuangsi_ was contemptuously repudiated" by His Majesty's Consul at Canton through these columns only two days ago; the rest of the story we have no hesitation in describing as a wicked and malicious lie deliberately set about by some one who wants to hurt Great Britain in China.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.