None of these persons of whatever yank has shown amy relish for the role of parasite and all have been busy reviving among themselves such professions and crafts as they may have learned in better days. The general is trying to run a printing and bookbinding establishment, asking for work in Russian, French or English, but hitherto without patronage. Another officer grew up where hides were tanned and the inimitable Russian leather produced and is now busy with a sot of Chinese water jars turning out some really beautiful leather, but unhappily without cither capital or patronage. Another officer had the good luck to bring with him several Bokhara rugs and with these as patterns and with Chinese wool has woven 9 number of handsome carpets which no one buys because no one has heard of them. He is now at the end of his materials and of his capital also.
Perhaps the most pathetic figure ig that of a dentist who has scraped together a meagre equipment for Most of the men with no_ trades and no hope of work are hoping that some beneficent force will operate to transport them to Canada or America where they can work on farms, a line of endeavour with which most of them are familiar and to which they are temperamentally adapted. There are, however, carpenters, blacksmiths and other artisans among them who have aspirations of their own. One tech nical expert, a mechanical engineer from a Russian University, recent-duly attained what the others ard as apotheosis when he got a job in Tientsin as a chauffeur at $25 a month. His wife remains behind with the children, making shirts and underwear for those foreigners who have heard of her, and they are few.
Under the stimulus of an impending invasion by way of Manchuria, the local foreign community is now taking some interest in these derelicts. Individuals have already provided them with old clothes, rather inadequate bedding and a few tons of coal. A group of British ladies has also volunteered to form an international committee to help to fit some of them into jobs and to market the wares which the more accomplished are producing. It is suggested that a shop will be opened in which the rugs, leather goods, shirts and whatever else the refugees are competent to make will be sold under the auspices of the ladies of the community.
the refugees were showing a disposition to rest upon their martyr's laurels and to allow the world to keep them, it is probable that they would get little sympathy or help, but since they are in their rather helpless way showing a strong determination to earn their way, it is more than likely that Peking will look out for them and be prepared to help any new arrivals who happen along.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.