The Times of Wednesday publishes an enormous and most striking
telegram from its own correspondent describing the Russian " evacuation " of Manchuria. The drift of it is that the Russians are not evacuating the vast province, but are con- centrating their efforts on the neighbourhood of the railway, wherein they are building cities, establishing depots, opening up trades, and, in short, creating a civilised regime, under which the Chinese inhabitants, whether contented or not, are prospering greatly. Kirin, the capital of the district of that name, already contains three hundred thousand people, and though it will be "evacuated," will be ruled from the cantonments at the branch railway-station now about to be constructed. Russian Commissioners control all Chinese military officers, and, in short, Manchuria is a " pro- tected " State in the Indian sense. The correspondent thinks all this proof of Russia's bad faith, and no doubt there has been some chicanery—partly intended to " save the face " of the Chinese—but it was always certain that if the Russian engineers reached the Pacific her power would reach it too. The world, as is clear from this very account, is the gainer by her advance, and we fail to see where it is that we lose. We can trade at Newchwang just as well as at Odessa.
