In yesterday's issue we published a report of a speech made by Mr. Yang Hsi-chieh, Director of the Civil Affairs Department of the State Council, on the replies received from foreign Powers to China's reqitest for an immediate session of the abolition of extraterritoriality. Two points in this sspeceh call for attention, In the first place, Mr. Yang made no con-coalment of the fact that the Powers had declined for the present to discuss the question raised. In these circumstances the persistent refusal of Nanking to publish the replies is surely very. strange: since their main effect is known, what harm can there be in making public the details? It does not seem to have occurred to the Wai. chiaopu that this reticence will not impress the foreign Governments favourably, They will naturally con-elude that' Nanking cannot, before its own folk, face the implied eritic= ism of the Powers' replies, and will infer from this that the Government is not yet fully master in its own house, an additional reason for: still maintaining the safeguard of the Treaties. The second feature of interest lies in Mr, Yang's elos-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.