Mone than a week has elapsed ince General Sun Chuan-fang marched his troops out of the Arsenal, as part of the peace terms with General Chang. Chung-chang, by which both parties were to withdraw thais troops from Shanghai. The Chekiang troops, to put it plainly, went because they had to: if it had come to blows, they could never have stood up against the Fengtien army, and General Sun would have lost his provin However, we were all told at: that time and on repeated ocjeasions since, that the Fengtien army would be withdrawn, not merely from Shanghai, but altogether from Kiangsu, as soon had "cleaned up" the district and repatriated Chi's \derless troops. That, as we kay, was more than a week ago, and there is little or no evidence of the Fengtien men"going. It may be said that the defeated Kiangsu troops cannot be re-patrioted in ten days. There Jare two answers to that: first, that Chang Yuan-ming's det ed troops—some 11,000 altoigether—were got out of Shanghai in between ten days and a fortnight; secondly, that if there is no sign of the Fengtien army going, neither is there of other soldiers being repatriated. They have not been identified as going rail, and none seem to have gone by river. Nor is it clear where exactly they are. Probably the best of them, acting under Chis farewell orders went to Chekiang. Where the resi are no one seems to know.
Meanwhile the Fengtien army continues to sit upon the Shanghai-Nanking Railway to the great inconvenience of the public and the serious injury of line, the condition of which indescribably chaotic. As related yesterday, the S. N. R. and {the Hangchow line have suffered enormously through the wat, much of the damage being absolutely wanton, and continue to suffer. General Chang Chung-chang has the deserved reputation of being a strict discipline arian: but it is clear that his subordinates have x very different conception of the word and even of meum et trium, when it comes. to a question of a public institution like a railway." For the slightest thing, members of the railway sta fittd pistols placed at their heads; carriages are commandeered for bivouacs and robbed of movables; and the soldiers continue to run the trains at their own sweet will ind at hourly dinger of collision, because they are too ignorant or too arrogant to understand that the mai way is a highly technical work, only to be entrusted to men specially trained for it, The British Consul-General,—who went for a few minutes' to the tea party given by General Chang Hsiso-liang yesterday at the Majestic, took the opportunity to make strong representations regarding the state of the railway, They were abundantly, needed.
There is no doubt that Mai shal Tuan Chi-jui in Peking is most anxious to stop all war and particularly to restore peace in the Shangnai district; and we may believe that General Chang Chung-chang loyally desires to give effect to that wish, But it would be idle to pretend tha anything like a peaceful feeling prevails, The Chinese me chants are in a perpetual state of nerves and no business is being done. They will hardly be assured Until General Chang's promise to remove his army has been redeemed. If that is as yet impossible, at least let the railway be released from soldier control, Carriages were never meant for barracks and it is intolerable that they should be used as such. There must be other shelters in which the troops could be billeted. No: thing so much upsets public confidence as interruption of the railway; nothing so much revives it as its restoration. Next to the departure of the Fengtien army, nothing will more conduce to belief in' the promised demilitarization of Shanghai and to the revival of public confidence, than the giving back of the railway to those who know how to manage it and the reopening of as normal a service lof trains as its battered condi-
"tion will allow,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.