A very graceful speech was made' by Mr. Loo Hing-yun, the newly appointed President of the Provisional Court at a Imcheon given to the Senior Consul's Deputies at the Majestic Hotel on Saturday, which, because of his reference to critielem of the Court and his appeal for patience on the ground that} the Court, like Rome, could not be built in a' day, we cannot overlook, 'When the return of the Mixed Court to purely Chinese jurisdiction was first seriously contemplated, we endorsed it wholeheartedly; but since' the Court has been in operation we have seen many good reasons for criticising the Court's findings in Jeases that had a direct bearing upon the peace of the Settlement, with more than usual fervour. In these circumstances it would give us the greatest possible satisfaction to be lable to say eventually that we were right in the first instance and that, given a chance to get into its stride Jand its bearings, the Court had been, During the past few months, have in no instance criticized ' the essential integrity or efficiency of the Judges. "Anyone who attends the Court will" be convinced within half an hour that the only proper person to handle a Chinese witn and get to the bottom of a tangle of mendacity and subterfuge is a Chinese _magist honest Chinese magistrate, exercise ing his common sense as freely a his knowledge of the lay, is the best possible person to deal with convicted deling Our whole] plaint has been against decisions, which went counter to former decisions of the Mixed Court" and counter to police regulations and thereby increased the difficulties of the Settlement authorities in the maintenance of peace and order.
Mr. A. J. Martin, in his reply to! President Loo, pledged ce-operation with the Court, after emphasizing. the fact that Shanghai's prosperity. depended in no little degree upon, its work, He. might have added that the foreign community's, peace of mind can also be insured by the Court and its personnel to no small degree, if Mr. Loo Hing-yun and his! colleagues wee fit to ce-operate with the Settlement authorities instead of obstructing their efforts and dis-Jcouraging them. Whenever _the Court shows a sincere inch towards such ce-operation, certainly be ready to exert! mach patience as Mr. Loo asks for Jand more, la our comments upon the Provisional Court's procedure, tsin to Chinese management is} still a subject for serious disjcusston, and while the big north-jem communities are left meagre-lly defended in the face of Southern advances, entailing as they do and as the Japanese [press recognizes, all the post bility of more Nanking incid-
Japan has flirted ostentatiously with the idea of "patient conciliation," knowing all the while much better than any of our Governments how dangerously futile it was. We have felt from ithe beginning that she would,' sooner or latter, come out openly Jand announce that she was weary of such nonsense and that Ishe was about to revert to tactics more in keeping with her own Jdignity and with chaotic China's real needs. The foreign communities in the north are thoroughly out of patience with all the simpering sentimentaliam that guides Occidental policy in this country that they would]? Iwelcorze anything in the nature lof Japanese intervention with ap enthusiasm that would startle ithe policy-makers -of' many nations.
The Wholesome Laugh Effsontcry ig invariably the last} resort of a losing cause. The Soviet has no more right to be represented Jat a congress of civ then a grey wolf we rend in_ yesterday's cable-fama how the Red agents tried to bully the Committee of the Intersional Economic Conference into agreeing to the principle that]
onomie relations with the U.S.S.R. evid be governed by the Red ster: of trade, or words to that} This is no more than a display of trepidation through jeftrentery. The violation of every] long-standing Russian financial obligation, the breach of the terms of every trade agreement with the Soviet regime since 1917, the _introduction of rabidly hostile propaganda into every country that tried to revive commerce with the USSR. and let bygones be bygones, Jare the most conspicuous indices to Jwhat the Soviet agents at Geneva mean when they speak of their trade system.—We learn further that the Red attitude ut the Committee meeting wax suitably greeted with laughter. Tt is distinctly Jgratifying to know that the Great} Fowers, in the persons of their representatives, atill have a sense of fhomiour and'can make fun of] pompous hypocrisy. Tt inspires the! hope that they will some' day understand. how absurd it is that Chinese delegates, representing no recognized Government and undecided upon their clique affiliations, can still rise up in League of Nations conferences, with the press reports of China's demoralization and reversion to-barbarism in the hands of all present, and talk brazenly of China's aspirations and rights, Some day we ghould like to hear, that Mr. -Chu Chao-hsin, or one of his tlk, spoke at Geneva on the restriction' of the traffic in opium, or white or farms, arid that the world laughed.
The Northern Armies The complete collapse of the morale of the Northern armies must be manifest now when the Commuttiste and Nationalists are mer-fighting one another and still energy enough to push up the Peking-Hankow and the Tientsin-Pukow—Railways and throw the Honan and Shantung armies into retreat. The military material that the Southern generals are using has generally been assumed to be the worst in China. A foreigner who was in Soochow a few days ago conversed with the barefooted, ill-equipped rabble at the station' and found that they were wholly un-aff from no adventurers for the famous three principles than any of us has. Tang Song-chi advan" reports are to be accepted, with his kind of a Hunanese organization; and, from what we know of Chiang Kai army, we should never have dreamed of pitting them against the calloused Shantung forces of Chang Chung-chang, oF the highly disetplined and well equipped Sun Chuan-fang soldiery. There seems to be no doubt that the Northerners have made up their minds that they are benton and that their confidence has collapsed utterly, Loyalty and good faith are dead among them, Their whole concern, when a war starts, is with watching one another to make sure that unit "A" does not get a chance to run before unit "B" is randy to run, The enormous sums that are spent upon ammunition and equip: ment, guns and aeroplanes, might Just as profitably have been' thrown into the Yellow echoing fixed Chinese opinion when we assert that a few divisions of Shantung and Honan troops. could swarm over the South and put the "Nationalist" armies to flight with the greatest ease, Nothing, however, can make a unit fight when it ig convinced that its officers are "duds," that defeat is inevitable and that the enemy is spiritually right and entitled to victory.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.