France, which owns the only railway to Yunnan at present, is imposing an unjust transit tax of ten per cent. on American, British and German goods, shipped from Hongkong to Yunnan, or vice versa, and which must cross French China. Canada in the same situation bids for American freights by making no transit tax, and indeed quoting lower freight rates; this is intelligent modernism. China and the three commercial nations should have this Indo-Chinese tax removed, and demand equal rates on French railways. This rate equalization is what America has demanded of Japan and Russia on railways in Manchuria. It is the same thing that Germany, at the point of the _Panther’s_ cannon, demanded of France in the Agadir incident in Morocco. In other words, the “square deal”, and it must be put in effect, say the Chinese people and the nations which advocate the “open door”. [Illustration: Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company. The Gothic type of architecture introduced by the French; the Catholic cathedral on Caine Road, on the slope of Hongkong. Chinese contractors erect these buildings. ] [Illustration: Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company. Nan-Tang cathedral (French) towering over native roofs at Canton. Up to the revolution, this offended the feng-shui superstition of old China, and was a constant source of difficulty. ] [Illustration: Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company. Cement hill roads, South China, Kwangtung province. Bamboo water-buckets. Note luxuriant vegetation, in a moist hot climate; fern, rubber, tamarind, banyan, mulberry trees. ] The political economists of Japan are beginning to denounce the exportation of coal, and recommend the reservation of the fields as a war supply. The proposition is to use foreign coal in manufacturing. Accordingly, measures have been taken to develop the Manchurian, Korean, Saghalien and Formosan fields, as well as purchasing from the rich Chinese supplies. This conservation method will certainly be followed by Australia, England, Germany and America, as the years go by. The export of coal is not a benefit; it is an impoverishment. The Japanese make into briquettes the anthracite coal of Ping Yang, Korea, so as to produce a smokeless navy coal.