Tuchun Chi Shieh-yuan_ is credited by the Chung Mei News Agency with making the suggestion to the Cabinet that the revenues of the Tientsin-Pukow Railway should be used to meet the expenses: of bandit suppression in northern Kiangsu. General Chi's alleged reason for the proposal is that it is the only source of revenue available for the purpose, but the Chung Mei Agency rather hints that General Chi has suggested it principally because he j wants to be first in the field when it comes to getting anything out of this railway's funds. It might be thought that even a skilled Chinese politician would have difficulty in backing up such a claim as Chi makes with any substantial grounds, but as things apparently go more by favour than anything else in this little corner of the tics will to be brought into play. The Cabinet, however, might, bear in mind that very interesting report that General Chi was able to contribute a million dollars to Tsao Kun's Presidential election fund, and some inquiry might be made as to whether a similar sum might not equally be produced for bandit suppression and so obviate the necessity of recourse to the railway. In any case there is a great deal too much reliance on Customs, Salt and railway revenues already in China.
Perils of Insularity So little has been heard out here of the British Institute of International Affairs, that the news thai two anonymous Canadians have presented it with a west-end mansion excites curlosity. Apparently the Institute exists to educate the people (doubtless with an eye to that Labour Government which Great Britain is told to expect some day scon) in foreign affairs. It will not "propagand,"* but it will distribute information about foreign "questions which people ought to have in a form they may conceivably swallow. "This is assuredly a woeful ideay How many people could say off-hand with whom the Treaties of Sev'es and St. Germain dealt, or even how much money Germany had to pay under the Versailles Treaty? But while we ought to be at least on a level with Mecaulay's schoolboy in these respects, the information one would really hike to see absorbed by the crowd deals with the British Empire alone. For example, at the recent Labour Summer School (as reported by us last Friday) one speaker gave some excellent home truths about the native races, on which an ignorant school of doctrinaries would thrust Western democratic institutions; while Professor Lindsey explained that the Indian Nationalists notion of self-government, for which they pretend the hundreds of millions of Indian peasants are hungering, is really a government by a handful of the Indian intelligentsia, (who number.by the way some of the most erratic brains in the Empire) in which the people would'have no share whatever. The trend of thought in the House of Commons recent years, as regards British native dependencies, must have been heart breaking to the great civil servants who have brought them the blessings of British Tule and now witness the gradual undermining of it by impossible theories blared abroad by still more impossible people.
Newspaper Trusts The announcement that the Daily Mail Trust has bought all the Hulton papers cannot be regarded without misgiving. When the late Lord Morley remarked to the late: Kennedy Jones, who was one the chief founders of the world such intellectual gymnas- Daily Mail Trust that in his probably not have day (as editor of the "Pall
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.