I had occasion yesterday to take a 40 or 50 li train journey on the Lunghai railway, running east of Kueiteh, and incidentally learned something more about bandit doings in this section of Honan. For some months past only one of the four city gates at Yucheng has been kept open and the people in that district are kept in a state of nervous: expectation. Bandits have demanded a payment of $10,000 from that city alone and a little Chinese child—presumably from a wealthy home—has been carried off. When we realize that this sort of thing is. taking place almost daily; that Chinese homes are being destroyed that Chinese children, and especially young girls, are being snatched away from their parents and loved ones: and then further, when we know that Chinese fathers and mothers suffer as we would suffer under such condition; that they agonize as we would agonize, our deepest sympathies are stirred and we struggle inwardly in impotent rage. One can only hope fervently that the Lincheng affairs will not gradually slip back into the scrap heap of former "affairs," but that it will be made the "supreme test." If not, this will merely be the beginning of the beginning, and sooner or later the issue will have to be faced with something more than notes. The bandits who, last winter, kept - the people of south Honan living in daily terror and misery and who
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