Every few days now Chinese refugees are arriving from Japan. A hundred or two come by every other steamer, and judged by the sort of spectacle which could have been witnessed yesterday they have little but what they stand up in. On Monday they formed a regular procession—from one of the wharves, then along the Bund and so up Avenue Edward VII. Somebody was taking care of them, a man who carried a flag bearing certain Chinese characters, and although their possessions were obviously few they were" by no means a downcast lot. How many more there are to come is doubtful, but one rumour has it that as many as 200,000 are returning from Japan. This total can hardly have come out of the earthquake zone; it is altogether too large for that, if not for the whole of Japan; but a certain proportion may be accounted for by the policy of the Japanese Government in limiting the number of Chinese immigrants, especially those coming under the heading of unskilled labour. Sympathy naturally goes out to all refugees, for their lot must for a time at least be hard. These men, however, are in a different category from the class to which we have unhappily become habituated during recent years. At any rate they are coming home and to a country which has not been blighted either by upheaval of Nature or the capacity of man for misrule.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.