How the affairs of the world are getting interlocked !
It is more than probable that the speech of Sir E. Grey, on Thurs- day, will gravely affect the future of China. The Japanese will never believe that with such a dispute in Europe upon our hands we shall risk a fleet in arresting their progress in Chinese waters. They are evidently determined either to obtain their own terms, which include the cession of Formosa, the Loochoo islands and others, and the peninsula of Liam- tong, on which Port Arthur stands, or to draw a net round Pekin. A new expedition has landed at Haichow—a city in Kiang-su—has captured that place, and now threatens the Grand Canal by which Pekin is fed, and any stoppage in which produces want, and therefore insurrection, in the capital. They are also threatening Tientsin; and as it is evident that the Chinese soldiery cannot fight effectively, by summer the Forbidden Palace ought to be in their hands.
