June 7.
Tue fatal encounter between Japanese bluejackets and the Changsha mob is as little to be wondered at as the menacing state of excitement which it has aroused. Given an entirely unjust boycott, a crowd of superheated students, who ought properly to be whipped and put to bed and, on the other side, a proud and fiery people like the Japanese, who brook nothing less easily than personal violence, and the only surprise is that nothing of the same sort has happened before. As usual in such cases, versions of what actually occurred are multiplying themselves daily, with corresponding exaggeration. The first report is probably as nearly accurate as we shall ever get. According to this, a number of} students were preventing cargo from being put on a Japanese steamer, as they have done elsewhere. A Japanese gunboat being present, however, bluejackets were landed to keep back the boycotters; stones were thrown at them; they fired some blank shots first, then, as their assailants persisted, ball car-bridge; and three persons were killed and six wounded. Such was the deplorable ending to the students' -escapade. The fact that the people who were killed may have been personally innocent of any offence, deeply as their death is to be regretted, should remind the students other provinces than Hunan, that those who deliberately set themselves to inflame the mob are personally responsible for the consequences.
We are told to-day by Reuter that the Peking Government has given instructions for a protest to be lodged at Tokio, and it is abundantly clear that the Chinese newspapers are intent on stirring up public feeling as they have never tried to do in connexion with the Lincheng and other bandits, although their countrymen have suffered far! more rom Chinese outlaws than they have from any Japanese. We say frankly that the Chinese press and public must not be surprised if they meet with very little sympathy in their attempt to pour obloquy on Japan for the Changsha affair. We say again, as we have said before, that the boycott of Japan, if ever such
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.