Why does not Lord Granville announce in some one of
the hundred ways open to him what he is doing to avoid disaster in -China? Has he sent three regiments of Sikhs to Singapore ; or warned Lord Mayo, who is accessible by telegraph, though he is -at Jeypore, 300 miles from a railway ; or asked Prim or the -Netherlands Government to lend troops if a requisition reaches Manilla or Batavia ; or done anything besides promise help ? The accounts get worse and worse, and we may hear, as soon as ;Pekin has heard of Sedan, of a universal massacre of foreigners. Lord Mayo is energetic, and the fleet is large ; but Lord Mayo is as far from Pekin as from London, and the fleet has no army to disembark. We shall never be really safe in China until we possess an island on the coast large enough to maintain an -expedition of.its own.
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