To the Editor of the '"NorrH-Ciina Datny News."
Su—I fail to see why there should be so much talk and thinking about the affair of May 30. Any, man in the street, including the Chinese, knows that no one is supposed to attack a police station without running the risk of being' arrested, shot at and be wounded or killed. A Chinese mob, however, did it under the leadership of one or more agitators who were in a raving of temporary insanity and that naturally caused the police to fire if for no other reason, in self defence, killing a few' of the attackers. Had a similar case happened in any other part of the world, need not go so far, Chapei or Nantao will do) the results would not have been different except that more would have been killed.
That an inquiry be held over the affair everybody expects, but it ought to be left entirely in the hands of the Commissioner of Police who in his turn will report in toto to the Council, and if the report be found satisfactory, there should be nothing more to be said about it except having it published to serve asa warning to the residents, foreign or Chinese, that no such attempts wil! be ever again tolerate ed, as police stations are not places to' be attacked without incurring terious risk to life and limb. I am open to correction, but wish just the to say that no drastic steps het this place. If the act of invading a police station, followed by the sending in of sundry demands because a few whd took part in the attack or helped to bring it about have been shot down and killed, is not lawbreaking, then, I, too, would not mind gathering 'a' mob and making a similar attack, and in the event of a few of my men being led, taking the opportunity to demand compensations and other extraordinary concessions. Will this be allowed to become the vogue in Shanghai while we proudly call this place a "Model Settlement"?
Speaking of the strikes and boycott. Supporting a foreigner, say, myself, were to do anything of the kind as a leader or otherwise. Would not my consul have me arrested and expelled from this city as an undesirable while at the same time warning my adherents that theft fate would be the same if id_not behave themselves as citizens? Why then should the present strikers and boycott agitators and their supporters be allowed at large in the Settlement, doing nothing except breaking the law and trampling} over it? If these people refuse to work and live peaceably, the authorities ought then to round them and march them off to the Settl ment borders in the same way as any consul (save exceptions) would do in the case of a foreigner or foreigners misbehaving themselves in the same way as the Chinese are doing at present. If this is done at once the Bolsheviks and their followers will be totally disappointed, and we will never more have a re-Petition of the deplorable events of which we have been witnesses. 1 may add a reminder, that this Settlement having been set apart Yor the residence of foreigners only, it, cannot but follow that Chinese mo who are residing: within its limits rust respect the laws and rales as set down by the governing foreign authorities.
Tam, ete,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.