A further misconception finds utterance from time to time in attributing entirely to the boycott our recently declining trade with] China. Had there been no boycott, our trade figures would have shown considerable decrease as the result of civil war. If you examine the Customs trade returns, you find that! the value of China's' imports of machinery, metals and minerals and variety of miscellaneous imports show a decrease of over 99 million taels in 1925, as compared with 1923. Of this decrease, the drop in imports from Great Britain cannot [possibly have accounted for more than 27k million taels, because that is the total of the drop in our imports into China in 1925, as compared with! 10923, so that, in the three classes of goods referred to, there was a diminution in 1925 from countries other than Great Britain of nearly '72 million taels.
How is this decrease to be explained? Obviously it eannst be explained by the boycott, because, except in regard to ourselves, there to unfavourable trading conditions caused by the internal state of the country, and if that was bad enough to result in a difference of 72 million taels in China's trade with other countries in the articles named, reasonable to think that it was at least as important a factor as! boycott in her trade with Great} Britain, The Chinese Mind It is also an entire misconception to think that, if once we gave up treaty rights, the Chinese would be so impressed by our generosity and good faith that we should have no more trouble in future and, as a result, trade would boom. I do not believe for a moment that that would] be the case. The Chinese mind does not work in that way, otherwise, how comes it that our conciliatory policy has been a complete failure so far} winning goodwill is, concerned? I shall. be: told, perhaps, that conelliatory agreements: have failed to win goodwill because they have accompanied by the despatch of military forces. In other words, if} there had been no Shanghai Defence Force, there would have been no Nanking outrages. I say, on the Shanghai Defence Force, there would have been, not only Nanking] outrages, but Shanghai, Peking and Tientsin outrages, too.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.