880
[December 14, 1907.
managed to get himself appointed to the railway that was to be. SHENG's manage- ment was a model of everything that ought not to b, but SHENG's own policy of not permitting accounts to be kept, prevented any one from knowing anything about the finances of the line-how much it cost or what it earned. Meanwhile the line made no progress towards Nanking, and as the Government wanted this, and SHENG as usual was in the way, he was got rid of here likewise,-very much to the advantage of the line, and of his country. When the little original line was running between Shanghai and Woosung every care WA taken to make it popular. Fares were low enough to suit the native who willingly gave his 100 cash for the journey; uis marketing needs were attended to, and he had his market trains both ways; in fact double the number of trains were run then to what are found more than sufficient for the present traffic. The consequence of this was that the trains were crowded with the country people, and the accommodation in the way of rolling stock was taxed up to the last axle. When SHENG attained to the control all this was changed; the fare that used to be a hundred cash was raised to twenty-five cents; the number of trains was halved, and the times of departure made to suit no-one, while the station at Shanghai-worst folly of all-through simple jealousy of the Muni- cipal Council,
THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND their contempt of soldiering. After wit- from ever entering into cordial relations nessing the grisly horrors of the fighting with Europe. With all his affectation of round Port Arthur, and sparing his readers foreign ways, SHENG has remained through none of them,—a salutary shock, no doubt, life a reactionary, and wherever he had the but they can always shut their eyes-Le opportunity has always thrown in his lot to returns to the ghostly crowds still waiting obstruct or hinder any attempt at progress on the Isle of Wight. They too, had got for its own sake, or unless he saw the way the war fever! They had not kept to clear to his own profit. In this particular their formations, four to the yard, all matter of railways he has had a special comfortable and by no meaus incon-grudge. At the time of the war between venienced by alien elbows. The sovereigns China and Japan, when it became a matter began the movement that made trouble, of necessity to improve the means of com- and the silly example was soon followed. municating from one part of the empire to "One British middle-class, the bulwark of another, SHENG, bing the only person in the State, had shown peculiar ingenuity by the empire prepared to fiuance the affair, inventing a new way of measuring the space at contrived to get the telegraph administra. their disposal. Why not, they argued, take it tion into his own bands. lying down-that is to say, by stretching them-
How he made use selves full length on the ground, instead of of the opportunity is well known; suffice standing like their bumbler fellow-creatures? it here to say SHENG never gave any It was inexcusable, for our entire population, a account of his management, but treated the mere handful of forty millions odd, were most whole affair as his own private property. comfortably settled in a space as large as a By one means or other he was sufficiently metropolitan borough, and wanted nothing powerful at Court to resist all attempt of but the quiet mind to be as happy as the the reforming party to have the service put day was long. The better sort lay down under proper control; and to the present accordingly, and this, of course, led them to encroach still more on the standing room day no-one knows how much or how little assigned to their weaker brethren, and to SHENG made out of the concern. Lately, press these unfortunate persons as close as however, as we have had occasion to herrings in a barrel. The latter protested with remark, SHENG who had been deprived of cries of 'Fair play,' and a few of them in their his monopoly, administered his last kick to desperation went so far as to offer resistance. the new administration. The new manager Their oppressors, however, not content with with a better knowledge of administration lying down, now began to kick, and they were not long in making miniature clearances about than ever SHENG possessed, and finding them which corresponded in some degree to the that the telegraph rates in China were higher parks, game forests and other domains of than in any other country, and that the
was placed at such a Inxurious, settlement which their originals internal trade of the Empire was being distance, and put in such an inaccessible enjoyed on the mainland. It was positively unduly hampered, decided to lower the position, that the railway was found to suit heartbreaking to the poor creatures
rates, and afford facilities to the private no-one's convenience, and the market people who had lost in the scramble shut up in
trader. The scheme was eminently states- who had been its principal supporters their ever-narrowing prison houses, their
It was in astral outlines all blurred and fused out of manlike, and was an evidence of the grow- almost ceased to make us of it. recognition in the fearful endeavour to stand & ing desire of her best statesmen to improve fact a blank failure, and for some time dosen to the square yard. Their victorions the internal communications of the Empire. certainly did not pay its own working assailante meanwhile having got what they Here was no possible pretence that foreign expenses. But SHENG never forgot having wanted, immediately resumed the standing interests were being in the slightest degree been turned out, and determined, as in the posture, and passed a short ordinance to the concerned, and in fact the object of the case of the telegraph, to have his revenge. effect that no one was to take things lying down
reduction was to advantage the native How much SHENG's railway cost, no-one any more.
trader and the native trade, the present except SHENG himself can tell, but with the rates being almost prohibitive, and the mismanagement of which it was the result service never used by the native trader there is no doubt that it cost far more than unless under exceptional circumstances. The it ought. A gentleman with no knowledge or experience of railway work was nominally proposed reduction was looked upon as a boon by the small trader, and would have appointed engineer but most of the work was been in full operation but for the pretended left to take care of itself. Rails were rolled patriot SHENG KUNG-PAO, who, finding he by machinery made expressly for the could not otherwise prevent the reduction, purpose from iron mined in Hupeh ; it goes without saying that by the time they were yet determined to be obstructive, took the course of memor alising the Throne. He laid, in addition to being of the worst bad, it appears, had it thrown in his face quality, they cost probably four times at that the telegraph system, which he had least the proper price. Engines of inferior been permitted to inisimanage for some style were imported without supervision thirteen years, had proved such au utter from America, and inferior rolling stock failure, that he took this method of pre-manufactured in Chili was put into the venting its being a success under any other
11
008
So that was the answer to the question, Why war? How war was averted, in this dream, how it is to be averted in reality, is another story, though it is all unfolded in this fascinating abstract of moonshine. We have quoted quite enough for our readers to think about and ponder over. It is worth that at least. It may not be palatable to many of us, but it can do none of us any harm. If this planet's surface is really virtually uninhabited," and we know it is -if it has boundless possibilities for the support of all its buman life, and we know it has-is war really necessary, as we have been supposing? If not, is it foolish even to dream of what Mr. WHITEING calls the
"
simple duty of restraint, without un- necessary violence, of any clan, province, state, or empire, veaturing to take any quarrel whatever into its own hands, or refusing to submit any difference to the arbitrament of an areopagus of humanity"
CHINA'S ARCH INTRIGUER.
(Daily Press, December 13th.) As we already more than half suspected, that veteran intriguer SHENG KUNG-PAO, or as he used to be better known by his personal appellation, SHENG HSWAN-HWEI, turns out to be at the bottom of all the artificial trouble about the Soochow Hang chow-Ningpo Railway, and the agitation against the agreed on foreign loan, which by his dupes has been put down to an offended patriotism, turns out to be of his own personal concoction. With the sole exception of the late LI HUNG-CHẲNG, DO statesman of any position in China has so persistently intrigued to prevent his country
manager.
Under somewhat similar conditiou‹ S■ENG KUNG-PAO contrived to get into his hands the intended line between Shangbai and was Soochow, which the Government-saw required in the State interests. Thirty years ago the first railway in China had commenced ruaning between Shanghai and Woosung, a short line of some eight or niue miles long, but meant as au instalment of the more importaat line. By a series of intrigues, in which LI HUNG-CHANG, and Tao TSUNG-TANG, the semi-barbarous Viceroy at the time at Nanking, distin- guished themselves, the line was handed over to the representatives of the Chinese government, and was immediately dis- mantled and the Fails and rolling stock sent down to Formosa to rot on the beach. SHENG was at the time not a sufficiently important man to have a finger in the pie. He had done some things in the way of financing for the Government then sadly pressed to make both ends meet, and so
service, all rude and utterly unit for the suburban traffic that it had to carry.
This is the man who now appears as the Chinese patriot who desires to free his country from the evil of having a good line of railway laid by competent engineers with au honest staff! As a fact the terms on which the syndicate were prepared to make the railway were most favourable for the Chinese government, who, if impelled by this newest and most disreputable intrigue of the old arch-intriguer SHENG to cancel the contract and pay forfeit, will never again have an opportunity of making a contra t on such favourable terms. One of the points on which theenlightened (?) authority SHENG has been trying to excite the minds of his dupes is that the Nanking Railway has cost so much money! Probably no one in the world could plead on the subject with worse grace than SHENG Hswan-awg himself. How much the line to Wooqung cost no-one, as we have said, bat Saznɑ will ever know. The money was obtained in an equally irregular manner by all manner of shifts