LAND VERSES SEA ROUTE.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 77, 30 March 1912, Page 10

LAND VERSES SEA ROUTE.

To-day, with its Chines© connections imperfect and incomplete, tho TransSiberian Railroad has become an active competitor of tho British marine to Oriental markets (says the French Dcpech© Coloniale). On fcho water British supremacy remains unshaken, th© multiplication of German t-teamers has been rapid, but tho superiority of tho British tonnage is still large, and from the competition of th© German commercial fleet the British have small reason to fear. But to-morrow, when Re Trans-Siberian is a double-tracked road — ; t is that now to Lake Baikal, and £1,500,000 has rewntly been appropriated to doublo the line about the lake — when the Pekin Kalgan Railway is finished back across, the Mongolian desert to Irkutsk, then the situation will be changed. Already tho British merchants at Shanghai and Hongkong have begun to use tho. Siberian railway for that portion of their exports or imports which needs rapid transportation. They use it themselves to avoid the mon«oon and the Red Sea horrors of the sea route. In war timo tho Trans-Siberian can daily send out forty-oight trains in each direction. By rail it is now fifteen days from Paris to Shanghai, including tho water trip at the Chinese end; by steamer from Europe it is thirty-nvo days.