November 9.
Tur telegram that we published on Monday in reference to Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the "Reformer," might at first seem to demonstrate an abner gation of what has come to be considered as a fixed principle of British policy. British soil deemed to be whut the horns of the altar were in scriptural days, a haven of refuge from which fugitive could neither be driven nor reaved. The leniency shown by the British race to political offenders is sometimes denounced as a crime against other countries, in that British territory is held to have become a harbour age for the misguided men who seck to effect social regeneration by means of the bomb and to remedy the inequalities and injustices of the present order by bringing about a regime of no order at all. A policy can only be judged from its practical resulta, and, broadly speaking, the British Empire has bad little, if any, cause to regret its tolerance of visionaries, notwithstanding the danger that one out of a thousand may have bad his brain turned by real or imaginary wrongs and may seck to find retribution in a spectacular crime. Whether it is better with tense political pressure to clam the safety-valve down with ban of steel, or to give it free play, so that the danger of an explosion muy be lessened, has not yet been definitely demonstrated; but it is scarcely claiming too much to say that the weight of evidence inclines in favour of the latter system. Great Britain has suffered in India and in Egypt by what many believe to be toleration carried to an extreme, but our national faith and instinct teach us that toleration, even if it errs on mercy's side, is likely to bring out the latent good in those to whom it is shown and in success to find its justification.
The contradiction involved in the sharp reproof and sterner threat given to Sun Yat-sen by Sir John Anderson is more apparent than real. Even to the easy-going
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.