All of this is common knowledge. It is simply repeated to emphasize that a disbandment loan would have to be_ supervise ed, which is granted by everyone but the Government or Governments concerned. To make supervision effective is the next problem in line. Supposing that all the various Governments in China, and all the independent provinces, and all the independent military potentates agreed to a proportionate reduction of troops and armament, what supervision would be needed to ensure that the disbanded men were dismissed and that, after being paid up to date, they would not be re-enlisted immediately, to the enhancement of their superior officers' credit? If every soldier in uniform were paid off without the confiscation of a reasonable amount of arms and ammunition, they would move in a perpetual cycle, like the Roman army of "supers" in a production of "Julius Caesar." dismissed in one wing, re-enlisted at the other, unti] every colonel had collected enough to recruit himself a brigade. If only a uniform were required to qualify as an unpaid soldier, every ¥amén sycophant and every loafer in the street would appear in grey with red shoulder strauss and draw his back pay, yielding 90 per cent. of it at the exit.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.