The Daily Telegraph. NOVEMBER 27, 1883.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3857, 27 November 1883, Page 2

The Daily Telegraph. NOVEMBER 27, 1883.

War between France and China is reported to be imminent. Tho news is of serious import to England, for, as the Pall Mall Gazette pointed out some time ago, the battle would be fought out over tho property of English merchants, over tho corpses, it may even be, of English residents. The Gazette goes on to say that if a bonfire were mado of all French material interests in the far East from Saigon to Corca, and if every Frenchman in those parts wero summarily executed, France would suffer less in money and in life than England is likely to do in the course of tho struggle that appears to be inevitable, but with which we have had absolutely nothing to do, France has hardly any but sentimental interests in Chinese waters, and her interests inland are almost exclusively confined to Jesuit missionaries, members of a fraternity recently expelled from France, and now in imminent danger of being expelled from China. With us the case is altogether different. Wo have the Chinese trade in our hands, the treaty ports are filled with British merchants, their warehouses aro crammed with British goods. Our capital is invested in Chinese industries, our colonies stud the Chinese littoral, our missionaries traverse every province of the interior. All these solid and substantial interests are imperilled by the present crisis. Whoever wins in tho impending war, England will lose, even if by the exorcise of the utmost care and forbearance we avoid being dragged into a quarrel which we havo done all in our power to avert. The struggle, if it comes, will be long, bloody, and exhausting, and the Chiucsewill lose no opportunity of committing us on their side. They will not have to wait long for a chance of inflaming the French against us. Their arsenals abound with Englishmen in the service of the Chinese Government. Soldiers of fortune of English and American extraction, vulgarized Gordons and Tehcrnayeffs, abound in tho Chinese army. The Chinese gunboats sent out by Sir William Armstrong, biu'lt in English shipyards, and armed with English cannon, would bo all the more effective if they were commanded by English seamen. All the Chinese have to do to create a very bad feeling between France and England is to push all their English employes well to the front in the coming campaign. They could not desert the service without disgrace. Yet if they remain in it, and a French ironclad wero to be sunk by English built gunboats, commanded by English captains, it needs no prophet to forseo that the commotion in France would to say the least, be considerable. The blockade, again, will be an endless source of friction. We never recognize any blockade that is not effective, and how can the French establish an effective blockade along a coast lino stretching 3000 miles from south to north ? Then, again, our position at Hong Kong will enable our smugglers to set the blockade at defiance, nor will the French, without violating British territory or intruding upon waters, be able to prevent their operations.