Jane th.
Since, on May 28, the Directors of the Telephone Ca. circularized the shareholders recommending acceptance of the I. T. & T. tender, the Chinese press has ben full of reports that the Ministry of Communications was insisting that Nanking must buy the Com. pany, for the usual preservation of "sovereign rights." The same agitation was seen over the sale Electricity Department, the situation of which was quite different from that of the Telephone Ca. and conceivably more attack, and the publication yesterda atest by the n Affairs against acceplance of the I, T. & T., or any foreign tender, occasioned not a little surprise. The new ramour, that the Chinese agitation was not unconnected with thor hidden foreign influences whi have been the subject of so gossip, was inevitably strengthened. Naturally such stories can never be proved and, if we reluctantly refer to them again, it is because they are so utterly lien to the history of public and municipal enterprise Shanghai. The intolerable, curred in settling the destiny the Telephone Ca. makes it possible to ignore them.
The protest issued in the name of the Waichinopu does not read very convincingly and it overlooks certain obvious conside ations which prevent its bein taken very seriously. In the first pface, the Telephone Ca. is 'a purely trading concern the property of a number of private
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.