June 11.
THE news that an appeal has been sent to the big engineering firms of Great Britain to endeavour to get the action taken respect of Lincheng that the case requires offers a ray of hope. These are the sort of people to whom even the encrusted permanent official is obliged to listen.. The Peking correspondent of ''The Times'' is also doing yeoman service. These, we may add, are not the only "trenchant telegrams that have gone to various quarters in London during the past week. No one at Home has any excuse for not understanding the full facts and the immense gravity of Lin-"cheng. Yet the answers that have been received to earlier representations are most futile and disheartening. They indicate an obstinate refusal—inability there cannot be, in view of the. plain speaking of the telegrams sent—to admit realities. Washington appears even worse than London. Three days after the outrage a telegram told us the U. S. War Department was ready to back up any course recommended by the State Department or. the Ministers in Peking with armed force. Nothing has come of it. Even Chang Chin-yao, who could probably throw a good deal of light on the bandits' doings, remains at liberty in Tientsin, although he has been expressly "'wanted'' by the Americans in more than one Note to the Waichiaopu, for the murder of Mr. Reimert at Yochow.
The results of all this miserable indecision are plainly to be seen at Tsaochuang and Paotzeku. The bandits may be encircled, as we have been proudly told on various occasions. But for all practical purposes they are masters of the situation. The negotiations, or enrolment of the outlaws, or whatever wretched farce is being played, stretch out interminably. And the foreign prisoners have been in durance for over five weeks. The contrast between the unpardonable failure of the foreign Powers to bring the Chinese officials to their senses, and the vigorous promptitude with which the Chinese Government has demanded apologies, indemnity and the recall of the Japanese naval commander, in connexion with the Changsha affair, is most striking. We are glad to see
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.