Oct. 23.
Our contributor to-day, writing upon the spirit of the recent National Chiristian Council conference and what it tried to do, as he saw it, argues well. But, with all respect to him and with every wish to be fair to the N.C.C,, we think that he argues in a bad cause. He thinks that, the N.C.C. was bound to express some opinion on China's int national problems, as its silence might have been misinterpreted in one way or another. The answer to that has already been given in these columns: Other important religious organizations did not find themselves under any such constraint and so far from losing, they have demon-straply gained, by silence. Our contributor is' further. very. ai xious to prove the spiritual rather than the political nature of the resolution on "unequal" treaties which the conference passed last Tuesday. But the: fine shades will be totally lost on Chinese outside the meeting, who will either take no notice of the clauses about bringing the spirit of Christ into international relationships, or will regard them as so much powder to be taken with the jam of an apparently unanimous vote by the NCC, which, like precious balms, may be used to br the heads of foreigners generally. It is a fairly safe rule that the best thing to do with al blunder is to let it alone. If the N.C.C. had never made the wild plunge into political propaganda that brought upon them so much adverse criticism last autumn, they would not have been confronted with the awkward situation that led to so much waste of time and pathetic contrivance "the la meeting"
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.