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6 CHINA MISSION YEAR BOOK.looked for. Then may perhaps occur the fulfillment ofa prophecy of one of the Taotais who accompaniedH. K. Tuan* Fang around the world five years since :"No nation ever yet got its liberties without sheddingmuch blood, and China will be no exception."In themeantime popular pressure everywhere curtails andeventually extinguishes all foreign concessions whichcan be got hold of. By this kind of combined pressurethe Peking Syndicate was bought off from Shansi, andthe capable official who engineered the negotiations wasthe most popular man of the day, and is now theefficient governor of that province. The relinquishmentfor a fair consideration of the claim of Sir Lister Kayein Anhui probably marks the terminal moraine of allenterprises of this sort. The general unrest throughoutChina during the past year has been greatly stimulatedby the widespread report (from some unknown source)that China is again on the point of being "carved uplike a melon." The repeated attempts on the life of thePrince Regent show that the evil spirit which enteredChina in a foreign guise just before the ConstitutionalCommission left Peking late in 1905, is still an unwelcome and sinister guest in the Celestial Krnpire, whosedeparture may perhaps be long delayed.The military riots of the last winter were a gravesymptom that the best trained troops may not inprobablyprove a source of fatal weakness in the hour of direstneed. It is not the army, but the spirit behind thearmy that counts, and this remains more or less of anenigma. The recent explosion at the capital of Hunanis an impressive demonstration how thin is the shellwhich separates us from volcanic fires which for aughtthat we know rage widely, but until this ominousoccurrence has been thoroughly investigated,it is vainto dogmatize upon An it. exception to the constitutional weakness of the Central Government appears toexist in its firmness in dealing with the spectacular andperipatetic divinity known as the Dalai Lama, who was