Apr. 29.
Ar no time stock Shanghai was a settlement have armed robbery and the smuggling of arms been so prevalent as they jara to-day. It is hardly too much to say that a regular state lof war prevails, with the additional complication "that political motives must frequently In these circumstances the! new rule recently introduced at the Mixed Court that all armed robbers must be represented by lawyers, for whom presumably the Court pays, cannot but _be viewed with some doubts. The} question is an extremely delicate one, inasmuch as it is the first principle of justice that a man is assumed innocent until proved guilty and that be should be given every opportunity of rebutting an accusation. - But the circumstances in which the Mixed Court tries a charge armed assault are not quite parallel to a similar accusation elsewhere. It is safe to assume that the police will not bring] such a charge without being fairly sure of their facts; and if there be any weakness in the latter, the Court has ample experience and, if we may venture to say so, intelligence, to detect the aw. Furthermore, the Mixed Court is to some extent court of first instance—in which accused men are often advised to obtain a lawyer, though none ig provided for them—in' respect jof armed robbers it carmot sentence to death, it cannot] order the "'cat'' (undoubtedly the most effective punishment! against gentry of this type), and even the terms of imprisonment it can pass are strictly! limited. The present Military Court at Lungwa was instituted by the late President Yuan Shih-kai expressly to try crimes of violence, at the request of the Shanghai authorities. It is presided over by a very able magistrate, who is certainly in) no hurry to convict blindly, but! goos over every piece of evidence against men sent to be tried by him. There appears no danger of injustice being done in handing over at once to this Court prisoners against whom a primd facie case has} been established, as indeed is the practice in all Concessions elsewhere, and to do so would! save the time of the much overworked Mixed. Court. If this method of procedure is deemed impossible, then we would urge most. strongly the introduction of the "'eat."".'Ae matters now' stand, there is mot the slightest doubt that armed robbers have been greatly encouraged by the prospect that a clever Inwyer will get them off on a legal technicality and the police pro-Portionately, discouraged.
To turn to the question of} smuggling, there is here an urgent'ease for action by the Diplomatic Body. Scareely a week passes without the seizure of arms and ammunition in some vessel and when, as in the case lof the Pant Locat in which thirty Mausers and 175,000 rounds of ammunition were found on Saturday, a previous! seizure has also been made at Hongkoog, it is safe to conclude! that what' is actually found is notting compared with the total quantity -that gets into Shanghai and that there is some very serious lack of supervision] jon ships. No arrests can be made as matters stand—except in rare occurrences like that the three men caught bringing arms from the Chambord last week, who were 0 foolish a8 to complicate their case by resisting the police—and the obvious] remedy is some ruling whereby' the captain of a ship on which' smuggled arms had been found, the ship herself, were made responsible. This could, we imagine, be done by the Customs with the support of the Dij plomatic Body. It is a drastic remedy, perhaps; but we cannot overlook the fact that the circumstances of the time ara abnormal and call for proportionate action.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.