The announcement is forthcoming from" many Chinese sources that the leases of the British Concessions at Hankow and Tientsin are due to expire in a few months. The reminder is not given for the benefit of foreigners but for the Chinese, and having the desired effect. The Street Unions of Hankow ard preparing a demonstration with the object of demanding that the lease there shall not be renewed, and various organizations in the north are taking similar steps in respect of Tientsin. A pretty display they will make, especially at a time when such an important personage as Li Yuan-hung, ex-revolutionary and ex-President, finds it not only convenient but rather essential that he should withdraw to the peacod and quiet of one of these Concessions. Do these trouble-mongers, however, imagine that they ard going to do anything apart from creating al temporary local unrest? If they do, then conceit has got the better of any judgment they have ever possessed. They may shout themselves hoarse for all the impression they will make, for the disclosures of the country's condition since the Washington Conference have brought the Powers to a realization of the real state of affairs. These people are the very last section of the populace of Chinai qualified to put forward such a demand as they propose to do, for it is doubtful whether a single one of them has ever done an honest stroke of work for his country. In time of peril, and there have been plenty of instances in their midst, they have not rushed to the colours as does the manhood of other countries, but, as we have seen them in Shanghai, they have rather courted foreign protection. And to hand the Concessions over to such men—there could be no words to describe its folly.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.