The Thorburn Mystery The Thorburn case, unsatisfactory from start to
finish, has ended a little better than it began. According to the stories current in this country, .a young Shanghai Englishman, seized by Chinese soldiers near the city, was maltreated—according to some versions tortured— and then secretly done to death, and the Foreign Office has been bitterly criticized for its failure to secure immediate satisfaction for an unprovoked outrage. The facts as now disclosed in a Chinese Note published this week, which the British Government would certainly not have accepted without -independent investigation, are that Thorburn, a youth of nineteen, set off on his own account into • a notoriously disturbed area armed with a revolver and ample ammunition ; that when challenged by Chinese railway guards he shot and wounded two of them, in both cases fatally ; that he refused to give any account of himself ; and that when he was brought before the Chinese commanding officer for examination, the latter, incensed by the prisoner's demeanour, lost his temper and shot him through the head, and then in alarm concealed the body and the evidence. He has since been tried by court-martial and sentenced to fourteen years' imprisonment. The Chinese Government has expressed the fullest regret, and there the episode may well be left.
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