Our obituary of General Kuroparkin recalls a long list of commanders. who have concluded their careers in the course of a single unsuccessful campaign. General Kuropatkin had done striking work in his younger days both at war and in peace manceuvres, and it is probable that he never had a chance in the Russo-Japanese War, yet he had to go, In the same category we find Falkenhayn, the chief of the German General Staff, who succeded the—insignificant younger Moltke. He was a soldier of very high quality who achieved some of the greatest successes which the German arms had during the war, but he could not win the necessary decisive victory and 40 disappeared, to be replaced by Hindenburg and Ludendorff, neither of whom succeeded where he failed.
It is seldom, we imagine that the decision to remove a man from his command 1s completely justified, as the case of Falkenhayn rather suggests, and modern chronicles are full of instances of this sort. Marshal Joffre was gently shelved to make way for General Nivelle, yet his work at the Battle of the Marne creating new armies to be placed under Foch and others showed the stamp of genius backed by rare military technique. Later it was felt that he wax not pushing the war strenuously enough, as Nivelle assumed command and elmest brought disaster on France by his rash stroke onthe Chemin des Dames.
Probably Sir Tan Hamilton wae given impossible tusk to cly at th Dardanelles, and when he did of achieve it disappeared from the Est fof men holding active caimand, Nir Charles Townshend, the defender of Kut, has, we understand, never since been employed—at least up the time his hook was written, that was his complaint—yet what pecially can be urged against him? He had asked for mare men, nnd then, when refused them, eouraggeot new thoroughfare there they came upon some of the richest quartz lever heard of in the district. The assays showed a yield of $800 of gold a ton, and on the strength of this find claims have been staked out all along the road. No doubt the best have been taken by the road-makers, and if the yield is as good as the prospects we shall probably.
no distant date find some of them coming to Shanghai ax plutocrats. on one of these round-the-world jours, Good luck to them, and we only wish we could hold out to our Jown road-makers the hope of their some day being equally fortunate. We cannot, however, for the only treasure that is ever found locally is when people go delving among the foundations of demolished and rake up deposits of coins which were planted when tie original structures were being erected. That ie yo far as Shanghai is concerned, but what of Nanking and farther' Jwest? There is supposed to be gold at Nanking, although exactly where we do not know, while elsewhere in China all sorts of precious metals are in evidence. The prospect of finding these might be: some inducement to the authorities: to undertake a comprehensive road-making scheme,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.