Nothing is reported to have come of President Chiang Kai-shek's
second investigation of the disappearance of Mr. Thorburn. It will be unfortunate indeed if the Chinese Government's conduct in this affair does harm to her relations with the Powers,- for the circumstances of the young man's departure from Shanghai suggest that the fate which has overtaken him was due, in part, at any rate, to his own foolhardiness. Common sense, if no other considerations, should have warned the Chinese authorities that their policy of concealment was a bad mistake. There is grave news from Hankow of an attack by coolies on a party of foreigners, including a British lady, as a result of which the British and American Consuls are understood to have made a protest to the Chinese Government. If, as one report suggests, the police were implicated in this attack, it is dangerously sympto- matic of an official disregard for the rights of foreigners which needs drastic correction.
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