Peking, May 18. The new Minister of Uo.umunications assumed office to-day and his time was entirely taken up witn.the reception of the employees of the Ministry under the last regime and those. who would like to be employees under the new. it is believed that there will be no changes in the ministrations of the Peking-Mukden or of the Peking-Kalgan lines. The director of the former line holds office by virtue of his close friendship with Chang Tso-lin, whose life he saved many years ago when the latter as a bandit took refuge in a railway station where the present incumbent was station master. The director of the Kin-sui line stands in a similar relation to Chin Yun-peng, for when the present premier was in Yunnan in 1911 and~ made the mistake of adhering to the Imperial regime, his life was saved by Dr. Chen, who fled with him and prevented his capture by - shooting several revolutionary soldiers. Changes on the other lines are supposed to be imminent and it is predicted that Mr. Chao Ching-hua, of the Shanghai-Narking railway, will be among the first to go, since be was a particular friend of Mr. Yeh Kung-cho and was the Minister's own appointee.
In the Ministry of Finance the} new appointee, Li Shih-wei, has not yet made his appearance and there is a rumour going the round that, he has refused at the eleventh hour to take up his portfolio. This, of course, is interpreted as a sign that! the prospective Japanese loan i's not so ready to hand as was at first supposed.
May 19.
Private correspondence from dis. interested persons in Canton would! indicate that Wang Chan-yuan's hold upon his "Six Province League," is as feeble as most of us suspected and that the League was; employed chiefly to blackmail his! way into the Tientsin Conference of Super-Tuchuns. It is asserted on the best authority that Yunnan ard/ Kueichow still acknowledge the! supreme will of Canton and defer to the Canton Government in the appointment of all officials and-military officers, and even Hunan, though weaned away from_ the South to some extent by Hsiung, Hsi-ling's conspiracies, still pays inal fealty to Canton.
The firs; American official: observers to enter Siberia since the withdrawal of the army of intervention, are scheduled to ass through Manchuli to-day on their! way to Chita. They are Lieut.-Col. Davis, Assistant Military Attache at Tokio, and Commercial At tache Abbott, also stationed at Members of the Yourin mission in Peking were informing their friends confidentially before Mr: Yourin's departure to take up the portfolio of Foreign Affairs in China, that the trade agreement with China, about which there has been so much speculation, was signed many days ago, but that the Chinese hesitated to give out the news and had persuaded the various news agencies to withhold it from publication. This, if true, is startling. It cannot be confirmed at this writing, but Mr. Yourin's departure at this juncture would seem to confirm it.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.