Sept 11.
THE hundred and one stories told by the survivors of dreadful experience and hairbreadth escape de nothing to lessen the sense of helpless confusion with which this great disaster is still regarded. - We might fill the paper twice over with such descriptions as we published yesterday, and it would still be as impossible to realize what happened as it is difficult to believe that so many lived through it as did. Life in the Far East does not tend to enure us to hardship: climate and the luxury of life might be thought to tell against us when such a strain as those first days of September comes. And yet we know that delicately nurtured women and little children camped out on reeling- hillsides, often in the scantiest, clothing on foot and endured the greatest' anguish of mind and most terrifying sights and perils and have come through it all.safe and sound. Truly the human spirit is brave and the human frame very tough.
There are ugly stories mixed with those that are beautiful. That there would be attempts at looting, was inevitable. Every country and town has its submerged tenth, which springs up on occasions like this to make what it can out of the general misery. The Japanese Government recognized this by its immediate declaration of martial law, which we may be sure will be rigidly enforced.. But apart from this it is said that some Japanese behaved badly and one is sorry to add some foreigners, and that among the former class were even some of those to whom, in view of their official position, people would naturally turn for control and impartial distribution of the common stocks of food and other relief. As regards such charges as these it seems fair to say that the observers who make them can only see a part of the whole picture and even in that their powers of observation are liable to be warped by the abnormal state of their surroundings. And further, if any people behaved less well than they might have done, we' ought to take that abnormal state into account in passing judgment. Whoever is thankful for not having been in a great general calamity, earthquake, fire or shipwreck, may perhaps feel gratitude not least because he has been spared a test under which no man should dare to answer for his own conduct beforehand.
At least as deserving of righteous indignation as_ stories of people losing their heads or, perhaps through utter preoccupation for their own nearest and dearest, appearing indifferent and even heartless to others, are the rumours of attempted profiteering out of the general demand for supplies. During the past few days there has been an urgent call for tinned milk; and the largest firm supplying this tells us of undoubted evidence that some of the Chinese storekeepers have been seizing the opportunity to push up prices to an unwarrantable height. This firm is taking steps to bring to public notice the fact that the supply is sufficient and that its own prices are unchanged. We read also that the: Government, or what arrogates to itself that name in Peking, is meditating an extra one per cent. on imports, half for revenue. This, of course, may be merely a rumour. But when we remember the episode of the famine surtax and that no accounts of receipts and expenditure of that scandalous imposition have ever been published, we cannot wholly disbelieve it; we can only protest vigorously against repetition.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.