A Rumoured but Unconfirmed Transaction From Our Own Correspondent, Peking, July 22.
The result of the numerous reports in the northern press of a huge shipment of Italian arms from Shanhaikuan, hag been a fresh movement within the Diplomatic Body to revive The argo agreement of 1919 and inject new force into it. While many northern papers have stated categorically that a trainload of arms and munitions, sold to the Chihli party leaders, was shipped from Shenhiikuan to Tientsin after the Italian consul in Tientsin had paid $2,000 freight on the shipment, no tangible evidence of the accuracy of this report has come to the writer. There is no doubt, however, that Italian and French agents in Peking have been selling small orders of arms in Peking consistently for several years past and have maintained stocks of samples at addresses openly and well known to all Chinese military men. The first samples offered were of surplus Italian arms but within recent months, to the knowledge of the Legations, German and Japamese arms have also been sold through Italian jobbers in Tientsim and through French and Italian agents in Peking, The common knowledge of these transactions, which it is impossible to check without the wholehearted cooperation of the Italian authorities, makes the general public very credulous indeed of the report of the big arms transfer from Shanhaikuan to Tientsin.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.