Immediately.after Chang Hsueh-long's ight, when there' was more possibility.of a Fengtien st here, whether by arrangement or in martial array, the Committee of Safety was formed, the recruits being retired officials, prominent merchants and the like with several foreign advisers.—Gencral Wang Shih-chen emerged from retirement to assume the chairmanship of this body and the young brigadier, Pao Vu-lin, commander of the model 47th Fengtien Brigade, in which the people of Peking had come to re-ose such implicit confidence, was coaxed to remain until someone took over to prevent Red or other bad characters from making internal disturbances and to hold the city against any disorganized soldiery that might be moved to loot the place in passing. The Shansi agents in Peking were unearthed and commiunieation was opened with the commanders of Yen Hsi-shan's advance forces, who were following the Fengtien withdrawal at a dis: erect and leisurely pace, Tt was understood after a little was to take over when the Fengtien evacuation had been completed but that no troops were to enter the Metropolitan while there was the chance of an encounter in the vicinity of Shansi's pledges were given in good fulth and the advance forces halted outside a radius of about fifteen miles from the city, while the Fengtien troops made as orderly and well behaved a withdrawal as could have been expected from troops whose leaders had fled and left them to their own devices, Some rather highhanded demands for food were made in the villages and some cases of attempts to com= mandeer transport animals were noted, but no single case of looting. or brutality in the neighbourhood of Peking has come to light; which, under the circumstances, was rather remarkable. The highway robberies perpetrated upon motorists on the lower half of the Tientsin road came Tater, when greater demoralization had set in, and were then the work of single unit,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.