THE CHINA-JAPANESE WAR.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1189, 14 December 1894, Page 34

THE CHINA-JAPANESE WAR.

London, December 5. Reports from Washington state that the Japanese have rejected the proposals for peace. Shanghai, December 7. China sends, a special ambassador to Tokio to dischss the terms for peace. It is reported that the Japanese advance on Moukden has been abandoned, and that Count Yamagata’s army will try and effect a junction with the forces under Count Ozama at Noue. It was Admiral Ting’s squadron which captured Port Arthur. Shanghai, December 8. The Japanese first and second armies, after joining, will march on Kincliow, avoiding Moukden. Shanghai, December 10; The Japanese authorities state that the excesses at the capture of Port Arthur, referred to by the limes’ special correspondent, were committed by drunken coolies. Shanghai, December 11. A fleet of sixteen Japanese warships has arrived off Shanhailtwan. The European residents expect a force will be landed there to march on Pekin. It is reported that the Japanese, before they will consider the proposals for peace, insist on the surrender for execution of the Chinese officials who offered money for Japanese heads. The abandonment of the advance on Moukden, announced on Saturday, is not surprising, as a march of 150 miles frtan the coast in winter is a very dangerous and expensive undertaking. The above report of the Japanese intention to join the two armies and march on Kincliow, leaving Moukden on the right, points to an advance on Pekin along the coast of the Pechili. Count Osama’s army, after the capture of Port Arthur, which it effected the other dciy, has evidently been directed on some point in the Gulf of Liautong south of Manchuria, and the army of Count Yamagata, which, after, expelling the . Chinese from Korea, forced the line of the Yaloo, and was marching on Moukden (within 50 miles of which place it was said to have got), has been diverted to the same point. There are two Kinchows, one on the Liautong Peninsula, near Port Arthur, which the Japanese captured before attacking that place, and the other in China proper, about 250 miles east of Pekin, and about 40 east of Shanhaikwan (at the end of the great wall of China) which Captain Hannekin was, at last advices, fortifying to stop the Japanese on the march to Pekin. Kinchow will, we gather, therefore not be defended, and a decisive action will probably be fought at ■ShanhaijJ kwan, provided the Japanese elect to inaich. It may be doubted] however, whether they will face the hazard of a winter campaign with their communication by sea liable to be cut off by the ice in the Gulf of Pechili.

A recent copy of the Japan Mail shows that the national feeling in regard to the war in the East enables the Tokio actors te reap a harvest for the patriotic melodrama just now. In one scene the Chinese are represented in full retreat, and during a recent performance one of the spectators became so interested in the play that he sprang upon the stage and administered punishment right and left to the pseudoChinese histrions in a way which, while it afforded flattering testimony to the ability of the players’ assumption of their parts and delighted the audience, left more than one of the actors with sore bones.