mineral waters, European groceries, foreign
banking-houses, and railway announcements was an item. But for our
young man on the boat, I shouldn't have known what it meant. We read:

ALLIES PROTEST TO CHINA

Great Britain, France and Russia have lodged their
respective protests with China on the ground that the
Sino-American railway loan agreement recently concluded,
infringes upon their acquired rights. The Russian
contention is that the construction of the railway from
Fengchen to Ninghsia conflicts with the 1899 Russo-Chinese
Secret Treaty. The British point out that the
Hangchow-Wenchow railway under scheme is a violation of
the Anglo-Chinese Treaty re Hunan and Kwanghsi, and that
the proposed railway constitutes a trespass on the British
preferential right to build railways. The French
Government, on behalf of Belgium, argues that the
Lanchow-Ninghsia line encroaches upon the Sino-Belgian
Treaty re the Haichow-Lanchow Railway, and that the
railway connecting Hangchow with Nanning intrudes upon the
French sphere of influence.

There you have it! China needing a railway, an American firm willing
to build a railway, and Russia, England, France, and even poor
little Belgium blocking the scheme. All of them busy with a
tremendous war on their hands, draining all their resources of both
time and money, yet able to keep a sharp eye on China to see that
she doesn't get any improvements that are not of their making. And
after the war is over, how many years will it be before they are
sufficiently recovered financially to undertake such an expenditure?
China must just wait, I suppose.

On each side of the rocking railway carriage stretched vast arid
plains, sprinkled with innumerable villages consisting of mud houses.
The fields were cut across in every direction by dirt roads, unpaved,
full of deep ruts and holes. At times these roads were sunk far below
the level of the fields, worn deep into the earth by the traffic of
centuries; so deep in places that the tops of the blue-hooded carts
were also below the level of the fields. Yet these roads afford the
only means of communication with the immense interior provinces of
China--these sunken roads and the rivers.

Just then we passed a procession of camels, and for a moment I forgot
all about the article in "The Manchuria Daily News." Who wouldn't,
seeing camels on the landscape! A whole long caravan