To the Editor of the "Norra-Cums Datty News."
Sir,—On the 3rd_ instant, you published a letter which purported to be "a reply to Mr. Eugene Chen." It was signed "R.G." I presume these initials mean Rodney Gilbert. He tatters me. My "pen," according to him, agitates two historic capitals. Peking, once annoyed and amused, continues loyally to be interested and amused by me. And the fate of Canton lies, so to speak, at the tip of my pon. By this same formidable weapon, I have suc ceeded in capturing a great body of our returned students. Really, I did not know that this unworthy hand, which wields that pen, reached out so far and mightily.
Of course, your dishevelled correspondent writes in the mood of exaggeration. And it is in that sense I read his personal references tome. He prates, as if sounding an unfamiliar note, about culture and manners and "good taste in English," And you, Sir, have descanted on rudeness as if that, also, were a strange ethical fact in your experience. I direct your attention to his priceless locutions where he talks, iv the mainner of the born artisan, of "'impertinent—_ personalities'' and "impertinent absurdities'" and "Mr. Chen is making a buffoon of himself." To treat your correspondent as the Mosaic law bids us, would involve an instructive comparison between his present job of peddling views in your columns and the pedlar's business mentioned in an editorial footnote in your issue of January 18. 1 refrain for the present. But your correspondent will be well-advised to write of me leas clumsily when he is next moved to explode in another column of wordy and pedestrian prose.
I note that he has suddenly developed ''consideration for many of the kindly and sincere gentlemen whose political careers are involved in the fate of the Canton Government." I rub my eyes. But there is more. "'There are Chinese gentlemen in Canton," he perorates:: with tongue in cheek, "in whom the tradition of decency according to Chinese standards is strong, and a number of others who have got deep enough below the surface of foreign superticialities to understand what is known as good taste in English." 1 turn to your file of Wednesday, October 19, 1921, pp. 5-6. He was then using the "North-China' Daily News" to boost Wu Pei-fu (there is now a significant pause in the flow of heroics) while the latter was busy killing his own people in the Middle Yangtze. There, in six solid columns of verbosity varied by tea-shop gossip, this loud-mouthed zealot denounced "Canton, and particularly the person of Dr. Sun Yat-sen" as
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.