This belief is strengthened by the obvious fact that a screen of professional agitators, such as made themselves conspicuous the Hongkong strike, "has inter posed itsd? between the servants of Shameen and their master It is impossible to believe that boys, cooks and house coolies who are picketing the gates of Shameen and beating up any Chinese caught™ smuggling food into the island, When we get the ull reports of the strike, probably find that played a considerable part in the starting of it, and there cannot be a shadow of doubt that intimidation has kept it going.
Looking back over the events of the past few weeks, it is to be inferred that the bomb outrage during the banquet to M. Merlin the Hotel Vitoria shook the nerves of Shameen very badly. It could hardly not do so, Not otherwise would the Consular Body have sent to the Canton Government its. rather unwise note about the freedom given to malefactors, Inying itself open to the. obvious retort. that Shameen chose to do its own policing it must take the respon sibility for its own protection, fon duty until the 18th and the they went out, and at the same time a sympathetic strike of sampan men and women' began. This fact alone would suggest that the strike movement had been taken charge of by the prow fessional agitator class and all forther news tends to confirm that inference. We hear of the approaches to the Shameen heinz strictly watched by strikers, of food smugglers being violently handled and of the preposterous terms mentioned in yesterday's telegram. This is not the work of boys and amahs.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.