The Imperial Chinese Railway has a line running north from Shanhaikwan to Hsinmintun, with a branch east from the main line at Kaopantze to Yingkow. The railway has British subjects superintending the engineering, traffic, locomotive, and construction departments; but it has a board of Chinese directors, and is essentially and actually a Chinese railway run by and for the Chinese. You step into a vestibuled dining-car on the mail train: you note the automatic couplings, the bogie waggons, the large grain trucks, and read that all are constructed in China, at the company’s own workshops. You see Chinese engine-drivers, station-masters, pointsmen, brakesmen, and telegraph clerks, and you may be on that train for hours, running smoothly at forty miles an hour, and be the only European, not only on the train, but at and about the stations at which it stops. The trains are punctual, but they do not run at night, for the simple reason that Chinese passengers will not travel in darkness; so the working day is from 7 to 7, unless emergency trains are necessary. This railway is excellently managed, and it is perhaps the only real controlling factor in the government of the neutral territory. At each station there is a guard of from ten to forty of the Viceroy Yuan-shi-kai’s soldiers. They are fine men, in clean, neat uniforms; they carry small-bore Mauser magazine rifles and sword bayonets; they have plenty of ammunition and get their pay regularly. A detachment will fall into line and stand to attention on the arrival and departure of each passenger train. In wet weather they wear long oilskin coats and sou’westers; when they don these slickers they invariably leave their weapons at home. At many stations there is, in addition, a guard of soldiers from the regular standing army, mostly from General Ma’s force, but they are armed only with old-fashioned rifles, and are not nearly so smart as the others, but doubtless are as good fighters. The railway running parallel to the Russian west flank, and communicating with their posts at both Yingkow and Hsinmintun, it could be of great service to them as a means of communication, and also for the conveyance of supplies; if it were in the hands of their enemies, the Russian positions from Yingkow to Kaiyuen would be jeopardized. They could not control the line absolutely unless they seized it from the Chinese. Its neutrality was their only safeguard; and if regarded by them as neutral, then its usefulness was lessened. That the railway was untouched by either of the belligerents is in a large measure due to the firm diplomacy of Mr. Cox, the superintendent at Yingkow, who in difficult circumstances maintained the independence of the railway corporation and satisfied both the Russians and Japanese that strict neutrality could be and was always observed.