Peking, Dec. 13.
_One of the Chinese papers has unearthed the fact that there are 150,000 travellers monthly on the four northern railways who pay no fare. Needles to say the great majority of these are soldiers. Another local journal publishes a letter which was sent from the Ministry of Communications recently to all the big commanders in North China in which it was pointed out that unless soldier traffic on the various lines were restricted it would soon be impossible to operate the railway at all.
Sometimes there are improvements on the various lines with changes of commanders, but ge-erally conditions do not greatly improve. When Wu Pei-fu first came north from Hunan in 1920 the Kin-Han railway was made fairly comfortable for passeners, but since then conditions ave become so bad that the railway has had to run a semi-weekly express with special guards so that foreigners and Chinese first-class travellers may travel occasionally in peace and comfort.
ere are many complaints about the soldier nuisance on the Peking-Mukden line and it is impossible ta travel on the Tientsin-Pukow railway in any other con-voyance than the Blue Express. Worst of all, however, is the Kin-Sui railway which connects king with Kalgan and Kueihuacheng. On this line all first-class ears are invariably crowded with soldiers travelling free who will yield a place to no one. A foreign party returned a few days aga from Kalgan ina train in which they were the only first-class: passengers with tickets, but they were unable to find places until the men in the party became angry and ejected half-a-dozen uniformed hoodlums by force. Attached to the train was "fully equipped Red Cross hospital car. One of the ladies of this particular foreign party had been very ill and became worse on the train, so at the first stop application was made at the Red Cross car for admittance in the hope that the lady might find a place to lie down. This conveyance proved to be occupied by a military official accompanied by 30 armed guards. The Official flatly refused to allow anyone to enter the car. Such annoyances as these which the Chinese have to suffer more frequently even than foreigners have prompted several prominent Chinese officials to express the hope that the Japanese and Americans would foreclose on the Kin-Sui railway, which is security for an enormous debt that
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.