No advance has been made towards a settlement in China,
and, indeed, no authentic news has been received from thence, but there are a quantity of rumours, all of one kind, which point to a serious evil prevailing there. Too many Chinamen in civil employ are killed at sight for no reason except that they are Chinamen. Quiet peasants working in the fields along the canals are shot while staring at the strangers ; while in any village captured the inhabitants are put to death. Even servants in houses are shot and the women ravished. The British are exempted on all hands from these charges, but they are made against the Germans, French, and Russians by eye-witnesses not always Englishmen. The Government cannot, of course, interfere with the troops of other nationalities, but a quiet representation to the Kaiser and the Czar would, we doubt not, produce immediate im- provement. They do not want to disorganise their troops by permitting a license as offensive to discipline as to humanity, nor can they be blind to the effect which such conduct must have upon the Chinese people. "Death to the foreigner" is 1, terrible cry for them to excite, and it will be excited if their soldiers are not held in better restraint. That a great many Chinamen deserve death for their treatment of un- offending Europeans is true, but let them be hung, not peasants and servants who are as powerless as the cranes on the rivers' banks.
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