In printing the following article we must not be held vitiier as endorsing Mr. Fraser's opinions or acquiescing his deductions" We publish it, partly as we should any letter to the Editor, chiefly in order to correct the misrepresentations to which Mr. Bruce Bazter's articles seem unjustly to have given rise. The question is further dealt with in today's leading article.
Peking, Feb. 24.
Your correspondents Bruce Baxter and Rodney Gilbert have hit the nail on the head in the matter of the five million pound loan. They have said pretty nearly what is being said by every foreigner who knows anything about this country. To give to a government that has' behind it nothing less than a military autocracy is to throw money into the sea. There may be individuals in the government: animated by the best of intentions, but nothing alters the fact that funds provided for Peking in present circumstances go. inevitably into the pockets of the soldiers. It goes to perpetuate this militarism which we all recognize as fatal to the welfare of China. Mr. Bruce Baxter has also told us a thing or two about disbandment of those preposterous troops which are eating up the land, and in this he has done useful service. If disbandment is a practicable issue, for Heaven's sake let it be accom. plished.
Tue Question or Concessions.
But Mr. Bruce Baxter still appears to have hold of the wrong end of the stick in one important respect. Over a month ago, in the columns of the North-China Daily News," I gently took him to task for misunderstanding the attitude of two of the foreign Legations in Peking on the subject of concessions and _concession-hunters. He had criticized these two Legations for aiding and abetting—concession-hunters obtaining from China things detrimental to China.
One requires to have only the towards China of the British and smallest knowledge of the policy American Governments to know that both are dead against transactions that are damaging to the country. The actions of individual promoters of transactions are not, always easy to control, and there can be instanced the Crisp Loan of classic memory, and the other day that of the Pacific Development Ca., arranged without any reference to the American Govern.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.