It is of little use to try to chronicle events
in China, though the Wuhan armies seem to have won a con- siderable victory last week over the Hunanese troops which occupied Hankow two months ago, and the excesses of Communists and bandits in the South increase. We do not know what hopes Mr. Edwardes, Sir Francis Aglen's successor or deputy at the Maritime Customs Board, has of co-ordination .between Peking and the Nationalist Government. He has travelled to Shanghai, and must have in his mind some such intention or at least the purpose in inquiry on those lines. The really worst news is of the famine in Shantung, whence more than hal: the population has emigrated to Manchuria and the remainder are said to be starving. Other Chinamen can look upon these horrors stolidly unmoved, but in different times British and American relief would have been actively attempted through officials at the coast and missionaries or traders inland. To-day such agents are helpless, but we wish some effort could be devised to 'give aid by other means if they could be found.
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