Almost every step that we have taken in China in recent years with the foolish idea of winning Chinese good will, without care for her respect, has served to confirm her in this) policy of going her own demoralized gait while yelling lustily for favours. Any Chinese in the street knows how utterly impossible at this juncture it would be for anyone but a conquering foreign invader to abolish likin, whether under its own name or any of the dozens of new names that it would assume as soon as it became the object of foreign official attention, Nor would any Chinese be likely to risk the opinion that within Chinese If China were therefore to accept the terms that. America proposes, it would be with the idea, two years hence, of making a gigantic pretence' at the abolition of likin. Militarists and civil officials would be solemnly "ordered" throughout the land to abolish likin, If there were any sort of check upon the matter, the signs would be taken Gown at all likin offices throughout the country and new ones would be put up in their places announcing to the mystified public that these were "offices for the suppression of kin," to which all travelling mer~ chants carrying goods of any sort would have to subscribe small sums, in proportion to the value of their goods, for the upkeep of this new benevolent institution, Then would the head of the Chinese delegation the conference of May 1, 1928, turn to the representatives of the Powers and say: "Behold, the Great, President has ordered the abolition of likin and likin is ae~ cordingly abolished. Give us autonomy." Should the Powers then nee fit to quibble about the truth of this assertion, such an unprecedented wail would go up in China about the imperialists and thely broken promises, that most of America and a good part of Great Britain~would sob aloud for China in chains and, as usual, she would get what she cried for.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.