(Continued from page $00.) was the instability of the new regime. Taree years atier the change capital "Jepan seized Manchuria and Sehol, thus bringing the borders of their new protectorate, Manchoukuo, to within sixty miles of Peiping itself. Ever since these events the departure of the Legations—or rather Emboassies, as' they became, in 1095—hax been a subject of constant spoculation, "Almost every month the rumour suddenly crops up that the hour has at last arrived. "And indeed, it can now only be a question of a very" short space of time before. the Legations do depart for good and all.
"Natural Course of Events"
It is one of the common artifices of the modern historian to try and gloss over unpalatable ovens calling them inevitable and to console hhimseit and his readers by explalning them as "the natural course of events." Such, in fact, has become the general attitude towards the fate of Peiping and North China, But those who have watched affairs out here closely for the last twenty years will not be prepared to sub-Scribe to this comfortable doctrine. is, at any rate, arguable that, if the Kuomintang had not abandoned Peiping. as capital and had not, of set Purpose, destroyed the ce-operation and common front of the Legations, China need not have lost the vast territories that she has now had to suerifiee. The Legations were much criticised in their day, but looking Duck it must be admitted that they were of the greatest advantage to China herself. For over seventy years they managed to preserve the Integrity. of China, though in that period there were many" occasions When it looked as if the country was breaking up.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.