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party may frankly state its own opinions. It will not "do to base this, the most momentous question to the Empire at large which has ever come up for discussion,, to be settled, or attempted to be settled by the Home Country alone, as if it were a thing in which she alone were concerned. On its satisfactory adjustment may depend the welfare not of Great Britain only but of the whole Empire. The Colonies have nobly won their right to be respected, they have in the hour of need not closed their purse strings, nor spared the blood of their sons; it the outcome be that Mr. BALFOUE be the destined sacrifice, none will more regret his loss than those who have bewailed his one point of weakness.
RAILWAY INTRIGUE IN CHINA.
THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
46
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has been made overwhelmingly Belgian, and includes M. DEVOLDER, a Belgian Senator and ex-Minister. COLONEL THY8, of Congo notoriety. and M. MALI, the Belgian Consul at New York, who has been lately natura- lized as an American subject. The result is that it is now working in unconcealed sympathy with the concessionaires of the northern half of the trunk line. The status of the southern syndicate is still a matter of argument, and, fortunately for China and for us, before the two Belgian groups can amalgamate, the effect of CHANG CHIH- TUNG's providential clause must still be put füse in accusations of to the test. The schemers have been pro- 'bad faith' against China, but in face of such a trans- parent violation of a clearly expressed stipulation, it seems to us that China would be perfectly justified in cancelling the bar- (Daily Press, 13th October.)
gain. It is what OTHELLO called "hypo- There are more wars than those accom-crisy against the devil" to deny that the panied by long lists of casualties, by proviso has been disregarded, and on the complaints of correspondents, and by men- most technical legal issue it will be-sur- dacious telegrams. The Times last month prising if America consents to accord the published a very long article from its right of American protection to a concern Shanghai correspondent dealing with "the which is admittedly mostly Belgian proper. details of the long, silent struggle" for the ty, and managed by a board of which the possession of the Cantou-Hankow Railway. majority consists of Belgians or Belgian The venue of this struggle has been alter-nominees, to say nothing of the hands that nately Washington, New York, Brussels, are pulling the Belgian strings in this Peking and Shanghai, and the intrigues matter. America would be a catspaw of a have continued for six years. The original catspaw if the curious contention were to thought of CHANG CHIH-TUNG and SHENG be established. Gene.nl WHITTIER has TA-JEN, in memorialising for the Peking- another argument, that the northern Belgian Hankow line, was to build it with Chinese syndicate has "a right of reversion in the money, but the funds were not forthcoming. American concession, should the American "The American WASHBURN'S" conditions concessionaires fail to carry it." That is were too hard, so SHENG, the Director- not true. The Chinese Government repudi- General of Chinese Railways, approached ates it, and the only ground for it is a letter Belgium. The idea was that Belgium written by SHENG, without authority, pro- could safely be given a concession, that mising the syndicate reversionary rights country being too small to be likely to make in the event of the preliminary Washington political use of any such privilege. What contract not being definitely concluded. ever suspicions prompted our Government Supposing the Chinese Government to be to protest at the time, it has since become bound by SHENG's offer, that claim is put notorious that the Belgian Syndicate was a out, of court, because the eventuality we catspaw for France and Russia, and that have italicised did not come about. The our influence in the sphere of the Yang-teze Washingtou contract was conclude, and has been threatened with an objectionable whatever rights the lot'er conferred lapsed line of communication between Russia on at the same time. SHENG is now more the north and France in the south, an than suspect. The Shanghai correspondent objectionable bisection which our Govern- of the Times says there is good reason for ment did not oppose with half the vigour believing that he has been a supporter of or resolution we should have liked. Before the Continental syndicate throughout, and that was finally "rushed through," by the that only the outbreak of the Russo late LI HUNG CHANG, an American syndi- Japanese war has prevented the elimination cate had arranged to finance the Hankow of the sull remaining American interest Canton ine, a concession for which the in this southern trunk line. And, if the Belgians had also bid. Here again the Cabinet at Washington has decided to Chinese felt safe, believing that America recognize this Belgian controlled under was no territory hunter; and to make as taking as an American corporation, the fact surance doubly sure the famous clause was is mudoubtedly due to SHENO's adroit inserted forbidding the concessionnaires to diplomacy. So long as a few Americans transfer their rights to other nations or retain their interest. the American Govern- people of other nationality." How that ment will presumably be bound under the olause was violated, and its intention frus-extra-territorial custom to look after them. trated, is also history. The "Société The same custom permits Franco-Belgian Asiatique" got control by acquiring the diplomatic and other interference on behalt bulk of the stock, and ouce more the monkey-wiles became apparent. The aban- -donment of the strong opposition to the American negotiations was partly explain- ed. The new diplomacy was subtler, less obrious, less likely to be checkmated · in time. That it was this change from poli-
(Daily Press, 14:h October.) tical to financial machinery, and not Considerable interest has been taken of American insistence, which permitted the late in the affairs of Burma, a colony in contract to go through, was suspected in which the true British colonizing spirit has 1899, when General WHITTIER, King been consistently shown, and fair progress LEOPOLD'S "tool," was buying the shares; made. Particular attention, has recently and became a matter of conviction early been drawn to a suggestion that this im- this year, when the new proprietors_laid portant province should be administered their cards on the table. As the Times from Home, and not by the Indian Govern. sums ît General WHITTIER has become ment.
up,
REUTER a few days ago informed us the president, in the room of Mr. PARSONS, that the Home Press looked unsympathetical- who has been forced to resign; the boardly upon the proposal published in the Times
of the majority, and it is unlikely that the first excuse for exercising the privilege would be missed.
POLITICS OF BURMA.
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[October 17, 1904.
that the Indian connexion should be severed, and a united Malayan dependency con- . stituted of Burma, the Federated May States, and the Straits Settlements. The Times thinks many readers will wonder why this "fascinating and symmetrical schenie," this "apparently obvious regrouping of our Eastern dominions," was not long ago undertaken. It is not, however, s› obvious or so simple an arrangement as the Times fancies it to be.
The op.'
osition of the Indian Government, which will doubtless be forthcoming, will perhaps be based, inter alia, on the false idea that mere proximity ims. plies fitness. There is no greater reasou ml ducible for the grouping whose prima facie suitability was suggested by the Times. Burmese affairs are neither Indian nor Mala- yan affairs, and their relationship is thinner than that of China and Japan, which is by no means so close as some Home critics have been accustomed to suppose.
It is un. necessary to go so far to disprove that knowledge of one presupposes some know- ledge of another. Au administrator iu
South China would have much to learn in
North China, and Indian administrators have as much or more to learn of Burma- before any such clogging interference as they have been accustomed to indulge in would be justified. - Burma has been starved, its revenues diverted to Indian require- ments, and its political interests neglected. As Mr. ALLEYNE IRELAND has explained, externally Burma suffers from the en- croachments of France in Siam and in South-Western China, which "have been carried to a successful issue only because the Indian Government had allowed itself 10 forget, in its preoccupation about trans- Indus affairs, that a strong trans-Salween policy was called for by Imperial interests in no degree less important than those of the Indian North-West." The Rangoon Gazette, voicing what is apparently the general opinion on the spot, has stigmatised
ndia as
"the brake on the wheel of Burma's prores towards prosperity," an blames Indian interference for the facts that Burma's development has been allowe i to lag behind that of Ceylon and of the Straits. Released from In lian control, the Rangon paper says, our surplus revenues would he spent, not on strategic railways on the North-West Frontier, but on our own roads and on our own railways. Nor would this be all by a very long way. It would no longer be necessary to starve our educı- tional system, which cannot expant and grow without liberal allotments of money. Education is a matter of money." While attracted by the suggestion, the Times does not think the separation at all necessary or advisable. It points out certain advan, tages of the pressut connexion, but omits to show that the chief of thein would cease to continue if Burma were con- verted into a Crown Colony. It says:
"If we look at Burma's trade in rice and timber, at the increase in cultivation, at the extension in railways, and the spread of irrigation in Upper Burma, we do not think that India can be fairly held to have failed in her stewardship. More might have been done; but it should be remembered that the work of bringing Upper Burma under British administration has in late yeirs somewhit monopolized the attention of the Burmese Government, and that the years preceding 1903 were years when India was fighting for her financial existence and was preoccupied in the terrible and costly campaign against famine."
Exactly. "More might have bean done,” and it is because the truth of that adden- dum is so apparent that we cannot join with the Times in believing that the progress of
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