"It may not have passed out of the public mind that in February, 1899, Mr. Balfour came down to the House of Commons and paraded before it and the country the magnificent triumph England had won in China in respect of Railway Concessions. See, in Volume VI., CHINA: A. D. 1898 (FEBRUARY-DECEMBER.). They totalled up to 2,800 miles! The House cheered, the country indulged in a fit of self-complacency, and the critic who asked questions was an ignoramus or a nuisance. Well, five years have gone by, and not one mile of those railways is in existence except the Chinese Northern State Railway, which has passed out of our hands. Of the rest the two great trunk lines, one from Hankow to Canton, and the other in Yunnan, have been abandoned, while among those of shorter length the only one that still remains in active force is the subject of this paper. … "In more than one recently published consular dispatch attention has been drawn to the fact that the Chinese, backward or hesitating in the adoption of every other European or Western innovation, have shown no reluctance to avail themselves of improved means of locomotion. The Northern Railway is used by several million passengers every year; the sections already open of the German railway in Shantung and of the Belgian in Shansi can complain of no lack of traffic. The fears of an earlier period as to what the Chinese would do with regard to railways have been dissipated by experience." _D. C. Boulger, The Shanghai-Nanking Railway (Contemporary Review, June, 1904)._ CHINA: A. D. 1904. The Russo-Japanese War in Manchuria. See (in this Volume) JAPAN: A. D. 1904 (FEBRUARY-JULY) and after. CHINA: A. D. 1904-1909. The Hankau Sze-chuen Railway Loan. The question of American participation.