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74
THE HONGKONG. WEEKLY PRESS AND
The Indian Gazette announces that Major M. E. Willoughby has been appointed British military attaché at Peking.
The returns of cultivated rubber exported from the Federated Malay States in 1908 show a total export of 1,413 tons which is better by no less than 527 tons than the export in 1907.
The 8.8. Hanping, which sunk in the river at
Shanghai at the end of October and remained under water until December 30, was dry-docked, at the Old Dock, Shanghai, last week.
On receipt of the news of Admiral Rohidest vensky's death a courteous telegram of con- dolence was sent to the family by Admiral Togo, through the Naval Attaché to the Russian Embassy in Tokyo.
A census of Formosa taken at the end of 1907 has just been published. It shows a popula tion of 3,108,723, including 79,925 Japanese 3,018402 natives and 11,396 foreigners. About 120,000 aborigines are excluded from the above list
There will be general congratulations from numerous friends in Singapore, says a Southern contemporary, on the occasion of the engagement of Dr. W. R. C. Middleton, Municipal Health Officer, to Mrs. Brooke Hunt, sister of Mrs.
Freer.
•
A committee has been formed at Shanghai to take in hand the work of collecting subscriptions and raising funds for the relief of those ren- dered homeless and destitute by the recent cala- mity in Italy. Mr. A. McLeod is president and Mr. G. Passeri hon. secretary.
The Viceroy of Yunnan, H. E. Shih Liang, has wired to the Wai-wa-pu stating that the French have established a Post Office at Meng. tze Kwan. As this, the Viceroy says, constitutes a breach of the commercial treaty, he asks the Wai-wu-pu to notify the French Minister so that he may order its withdrawal.
The Anti-Opium movement in Peking is be- ing effectively carried on, says our metropolitan contemporary, but there are still several Princesses and families of high officials who have so far been overlooked. The Anti Opium Bureau now proposes to open a special department for treating female cases so that the habit may be abolished among these.
Inspector Quincey, formerly of Hongkong, and now Chief of Police at Chinanfu, arrived in Shanghai last week on a brief visit, having
three months' leave of absence. It is a rumour- ed that Mr. Quincey has been approached by the Shanghai Taotai to take the Paoshen Police Force in hand and train it.
His Excellency the Governor of the Straits Settlements, the Straits Times under.
The ex-Grand Councillor H. E. Yuan Shih Kai arrived at Wie-fie-fu on the 6th instant, and wired to the Grand Council that he will rest tioned by the Regent, says our Peking contem- there temporarily. This request has been sanc-
replied, by wire, conveying compliments and porary, and accordingly the Grand Council have
urging him to nurse his sickness carefully, for (hina and Korea, is shortly coming down Mr. F. 8. A. Bourne, H.B.M.'s acting Judge to Canton, to try two Admiralty cases. The first case is that of the owners of the Chinese junk Man On (for whom Mr. Loftus E. P. Jones has been retained) versus Messrs. Butterfield and Swire, owners of the s.8. Nanchang. The claimants in the other case are also the owners of a native junk and they sus the Yik On steamship company, owners of the 8.8. Tai On for damages.
Mr. G. W. Noel, being the only nominee by registered landowners, has been elected Land Commissioner for the Foreign Settlement of Shanghai for 1909. The following gentlemen are candidates for election as Councillors for the Foreign Community at Shanghai for the ensu- ing year-Messrs. H. de Gray, F. C, Heffer, H. du F. Hutchison, D, Landale, W. D. Little, H. A. J. Macray, O Meuser, W. A. C. Platt, J. Prentice, T. E. Trueman. Only six of these ten were members of the old Council and a poll of the ratepayers is necessary.
A Tonkin paper calls attention to the increas- ing importance of Saigon, and its extraordinary commercial development, as a striking example of French colonising enterprise. Every year, that port goes ahead in a remarkable manner, the population increases rapidly and builders never find business slack. The tonnage fre- quenting the port rose from 834,340 tons in 1903 to 1,695,315 tons in 1907. The volume of trade in imports and exports together shot up from a value of over 259 millions of francs in 1902 to nearly 392 millions in 1907.
During last year the number of plague cases at Rangoon was 1,109-about the same number as in Hongkong. In 1907 the public brought to the Sanitary department at Rangoon 1,157,148 rats and the Plague staff caught 40,602. In 1908, the Plague Staff's record was 110,696, and the public contribution. 731,712. The Health Officer comments:-This decrease is entirely satisfactory. The large rat reward had encouraged, a very big system of swindling; Rats in enormous numbers were being brought in by contractors from the jungle and the paddy fields, and retailed to large numbers of coolies, who brought them to the depots in small numbers for the reward. This system has to a very large extent been broken down and the
[February 1, 1909.
KUROPATKIN'S PROPHECY.
44
(Daily Press, 22nd January.) InMcClure's Magazine for the current month- we have the final instalment of the trans- lation of General Kuropatkin's suppressed instalments we have had very trenchant book on the war. Although in the previous criticism of the discipline of the army in the field under "officers who could not lead," the author has not a shadow of doubt of Russia's eventual success, had the war been prolong. ed. Never in our military history," he he says, "has Russia sent out forces of such etrength as in September 1905 when we unexpectedly received the fatal news that and the Japanese had been reached at Ports- an agreement between our representatives
mouth. By that time, he goes on to explin, they had rid themselves largely of the older reserves by sending them to the rearguard and had obtined in exchange several hundred thousand young men-new recruits, enlistei as regulars, a great propor. tion of whom had volunteered to join the army. For the first time since the beginn- ing of the war the army was filled up to its full complement. An army of a million men, well organised, seasoned by fighting and supplied with officers upon whom they could thoroughly rely, were preparing to continue the bloody conflict with the Japanese, when, owing to "painful internal disorders, and a hostile or, at best, indifferent sentiment among the Russian public toward the war peace was concluded by Russia. The result of this premature conclusion of peace he says, is that that the "Yellow Peril," oly recently foreseen, has now arrived. It is in the author's summing up of the lessons of the war that we are now chiefly interested. Consolation is derived from the consciousness which the war gave to Russia that her Western neighbours are not cherish- ing any plans of conquest so far as Russia feared and this fear, General KUROPATKIN is concerne l. Complications had
says, influenced the fortunes of the war, because her best troops were withheld to defend Russia when they should have been at the front in the Far East. He goes on to point out that the chief work of the
**
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an "unfortunate
bren
stands, will probably leave for home by the diminution in the number of rats brought by | Russian army in the last two hundred years
mail sailing about the middle of February.
His Excellency will be away some three months
altogether, and during his absence the duties of Officer Administering the Government will be undertaken by the Colonial Secretary, Sir Arthur Young, K.C.M.G.
the public means simply diminished fraud and lessening of effective action. The plague officers are now in closer touch with the section of the community which brings in rats and know where and how the rats are caught.
On New Year's Day, the Management of the Peking-Hankow Railway was taken over by the Bangkok papers record the death of Mr. John Chinese Authorities from the Belgian Company, Kilgour Black who had resided in the Siamese by whom it had been built and operated for the capital since 1872. He was an engineer and in Chinese Government. To celebrate the occa- his time had superintended the erection of a large number of the rice mills in the country. the Chinese Imperial Railways, held a reception sion, H.E. Liang Shih-yi, Director-General of The death is also announced of Mr. Theodore Fat the Railway office, Peking, at which besides Western, of the firm of the General Electrio Company of the United States of America. Mr. Western only arrived in Bangkok in December for the purpose of examining and putting right the big Curtis turbine engine at the Siam Electricity Co.'s power station. He died of smallpox.
The first instalment of the relief fund raised in Japan for the earthquake sufferers in Italy, amounting to 200,000 lire (about Y78,000) was telegraphically remitted to the Italian Govern- ment through Mr. Hayashi, the Ambassador at Rome, on the 11th inst. It is reported that the "subscriptions sent in to the Red Cross fund for the relief of sufferers by the Messina earthquake siready total 400,000 yen, and it is expected that before the lists opened in various quarters close the aggregate will exceed half a million. Pro- fessor Omori, of the faculty of Tokyo University, and Professor Nakamura, Professor of Architec-
the principal Railway officers, Sir Walter Hillier, Dr. Morrison, Mr. J. O. P. Bland, and ed in French by Mr. Lou, Administrator-in- others were present. In a speech ably translat Chief of the Traffic Department, H.E. Liang said that as the Chinese Government had taken over the line, it was now for the first time under the management of a Chinese office. He thank ed all present for having responded to his invitation to celebrate the occasion. The Chinese Government was sincerely grateful to the Belgian Company to whom the building of the line was due, and it was not forgetful of the many difficulties that had been encountered in the progress of the work. His Excellency further eulogized the excellent manner in which Mr. H. Prud'homme, the Belgian Company's representative, had fulfilled his duties of General- Manager of the line. Mr. Prud'homme and he had always been on the most friendly terms, and
has consisted in the enlargement of the Empire's boundaries on the North-West and on the South, and the result has been that the boundaries of the Empire have begun to be surrounded by a population
Russian people. In this respect, he saya not sufficiently amalgamated" with the Russia's frontiers now are less favourable in a military sense than they were in 1700. contiguous to nine different kingdoms needs, Russia, in her fro tier of 11,000 miles, in his opinion, no alterations in her boundary lines. In a Report to the Emperor in 1900, he wrote.—
"However legitimate may by our desire to possess outlets from the Black Sea and upon the Indian and Pacific Oceans, yet these matters affect the interest of almost the entire world so deeply that if we started to secure them, we should have to prepare for a conflict against a coalition consisting of England, Germany, Tur- key, Austria, and China and Japan. It is not the mere fact of Russia's movement toward this or that of the outlets just mentioned that is ter- rible to these Powers, but the consequences that would ensue should the attempt be successful. The possession of the Bosphorus and of an out- lot to the Mediterranean Sea would enable us to take decisive action in the Egyptian question, in order to make the Suez Canal international An outlet on the Indian Ocean would
ture at the University, have now been definitely still remained so, although the management of | permanent threat to India. But Onstitute a
instructed to proceed to Italy to make investiga- the Railway had now passed into Chinese hands, tions concerning the earthquake,
r. Prud'homme answered in suitable terms.
thing cer tain, most of all, to frighten the more cultured peoples of Europe and America, which furnish