A number of Chinese papers published an interesting item of news yesterday about a train hold-up in England between York and Newcastle by a large band of bandits. It says this took place towards the end of August and many passengers were killed and wounded and others missing, but the actual number of casualties is not known. The Chinese Government is said to have instructed the Chinese Legation at London to investigate whether there were any Chinese passengers on that fated train.
A reference to the map shows that the district where this grave outrage might have happened includes - that strategical. centre, Barnard Castle, and our contemporary might have pointed out with force that it is doubtless because of the prevelance of such occurrences that the Government maintains a castle there. And having said so much its power of argument would. properly come to an end. For nothing has yet reached foreign ears of this unprecedented event, nor is anything likely to. Were it a fact Reuter would have told us about it weeks ago, and Reuter's silence may be taken as a complete denial of the whole business. Of course the retort will be forthcoming that for reasons of policy the thing has kept quiet, and the usual rigmarole will be gone through. May we assure our contemporary that such an attempt at concealment does not come into our business or political methods, while furthermore it may be pointed out that Great Britain has so many' candid critics throughout the world that the news of the event could not be suppressed for even 24 hours.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.