Peking, June 20. records which should eliminate Political developments in China them from any government shaped during the past few weeks have for strenuous reform work. brought a constant series of sur-Easy To BE GLoomy. prises, not so much for the ill It is easy to retail further informed as for those who are reasons for being positively gloomy credited with being well informed about the future, reasons which are and who imagine themselves echoed everywhere but within a politics-wise. Almost every move small cheerful circle in Paotingfu. in the current reorganization carrie There is no parliamentary quorum ed out under Wu Pei-fu's guidance and there is not likely to be one. has been unorthodox, either from The President is not a strong man a military or a political point of and he is not in a strictly legal view and has therefore filled his position. If he were a strong man friends and admirers with gloom he might ignore questions of and discouragement and inspired legality as poppycock in this season his enemies with hope and elation. of stress and undertake reforms Yet_each event as it unfolds seems with assurance and insist upon Wu to justify Wu Pei-fu's judgement Pei-fu's support in carrying them and the' chronic optimism which out. If he were in a strictly legal prevails at Paotingfu while every-position he might exact allegiance where else the wise ones are full and support from the whole of evil forebodings. About the only country simply by discrediting with step that Wu Pei-fu has taken the public any who opposed him. since his defeat of Chang Tso-lin Being neither strong, courageous which his friends were ready to nor strictly legal, his position is congratulate him upon was the regarded as hopeless by those who rather summary removal of Hsu study the political game. Very Shih-chang. It was one of the few few believe that Dr. Wu Ting-fang cases apparently in which he deviate will come to Peking to accept the ed radically from his plans. He premiership which was most exerted there his personal in-certainly offered him. In the fluence where he had intended that meanwhile the acting Premier, the unpopular President should be eliminated by the force of an unanimous demand.
The indifferent follow-up in the Fengtien campaign has met with disapproval because Wu's friends thought that unless he fairly extinguished Chang Tso-lin and his armies, made a horrible example of them, he would be given no peace in the south or the Yangtze. The recall of the old parliament was at first regarded as an unnecessary compromise with the chronic recalcitrants. Then it became apparent that it was an essentia] expedient devised to disarm all the recalcitrants, the sincere minority together with the hypocritical majority. The recall of Li Yuan-hung, prior to the assembly of a parliamentary quorum which could have endorsed President Li's return, was regarded as a political error neutralizing the force of the expedient and rearming the recalcitrants. The personnel of the new government as it has shaped itself in Peking does not inspire confidence. If it is designed as a conciliatory coalition, the critics think it a failure because many of the men who are known to be shaping it could not in any circumstances enjoy the confidence of public opinion in the South. If there is no attempt at conciliation but a desire in forming the government.to establish a real working force which will introduce needed reforms then it is again a failure the critics say, because the individuals for the most part lack capacity and in some cases have whom President: Li has restored, lacks the confidence of all of Wu Pei-fu's sympathizers because of his marked loyalty to Hsu Shih-chang and of the South, because he abandoned while working under and for the last President the detached position of the returned student and the diplomat and, in participating in politics, seemingly became a student of "the Mandarin school" of which Hsu Shih-chang was the cleverest exponent. The new cabinet ministers speak with contempt of the acting Premier and his return, "singing ina new opera" as they say, and with equal contempt of one another. The minister of this takes delight blackening the record of the minister of that. The little handful of parliamentarians are as busy as they ever were before Chang Hsun's coup d'état grouping themselves into cliques and making politics. The money shortage is simply appalling. The season of the financial panic of last November was a season of hope and plenty compared with this.
Tue Smives or Paotinerv.
All of this you can hear'discussed freely in any' yamen or tea house in Peking and hear the discussion lead to the gloomiest conclusions. The situation is probably being discussed in the same vein in every provincial capital in China. In Paotingfu you can review the same field to a small audience of smiling and tolerant folk who will agree with most of what you detail and then tell you that it all amounts to
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.