Sept. 1.
THE Chinese, we are often a sured, are anxious above all things to get rid of extraterritoriality. This anxiety is less in evidence at moments of crises like the present. During the! past few days the population of Shanghai must have been increased literally by tens of thousands, The refugees, there! ly excellent reason to. believe, include, among ordinary folk, the wives and families of many leaders on both sides the dispute. And always, as Marshal Chi Hsieh-yuan said in the interview we published on Friday, and as we may well believe to be the Shanghai is regarded as a heaven-sent asylum by every political conspirator in the country and all the great plots are engineered from within its sheltering walls. This influx of refugees is extremely hard on the normal peaceable Chinese population of Shanghei, sending up rents and prices to unendurable heights; and if there were any' conceivable means of damming. the flood, we should certainly advocate using it. Meanwhile! we would ask, if Chinese themselves, politicians, military men, students, merchants, shopkeepers, have $0 little confidence in their own authorities to protect them, that at every breath of danger they flee to the nearest extraterritorial area, why should foreigners be more eager to place themselves under the uncontrolled rule of Chinese republican dignitaries?
Last Thursday afternoon representatives of Chinese business: organizations invited the foreign.chambers of commerce to meet them in the North Honan Road assembly hall. The object of the meeting was to consider the war' situation and to suggest ce-opera~ tion—that blessed word—between Chinese and foreigner—if possible to stop the war; if not, to' get it removed somewhere where it would cause the least possible inconvenience to Shanghai. The meeting consumed the usual quantities of tea and cake, debated for about an hour and a half and dispersed _unfruitfully. Nothing else, we think, was to be expected. We do not wish to be rude to the Chinese business community, but we feel bound to point out that their foreign' confreres are beginning to be a little suspicious of their ideas of ce-operation. Much has been heard of it in recent years; it is a nice, easy word to pronounce it has a most imposing sound! but in practice it means nothing' but a Chinese device to get the foreigner, what is vulgarly called, "to carry the baby." At Thursday's meeting, one foreign speaker roundly said that he did not hold with any schemes to stop the war: in view.of the futile history of the past ten years, he thought that the only way and the best way was that the quarrel should be fought out to a finish. Another foreign speaker said that before he and his colleagues even considered taking steps to meet the Chinese proposals, they must have a guarantee that representative Chinese business men were wholeheartedly in the movement, would act with the foreigners in full accord and full publicity, not only secretly but on the house-tops, not in council chambers alone, but in the market place. This, to use another phrase which' will not be denied, "put the lid on things." The Chinese whispered together and then said they would refer the matter to their principals, of whom, by the way, it was thought by some present that there was a singular absence.
We do not pretend to feel the slightest regret that the meeting ended thus. Since we wrote last Friday that the foreigner's duty in the present crisis is to remain absolutely neutral, we have had abundant evidence that this represents the best and soberest foreign opinion in Shanghai. We may even regret that the Diplomatic Body have thought fit to warn the Waichiaopu that they will hold the Chinese Government responsible for any damage to foreigners or their property. To do 50 or not do so would not affect their right to claim for any able record of futile protests and admonitions of the past year or two, such a warning is, to put it mildly, grotesque, merely calculated to exasperate Chinese feeling. Shanghai has every right to protect its boundaries from being invaded by warring or defeated soldiers but then— halte la, If fighting really breaks out between Chekiang and Kiangsu, the issues involved are so very big, together with the close interests of Marshal Wu Pei-fa on one side and Marshal Chang Tso-lin on the other, that nothing less may be at stake than the question of who is to rule all China; and it is certainly not the foreigner's business to interfere in that, If the conflict, once again, dies out in compromise, we cannot see that foreigners would improve the position by taking a hand in it; and we certainly do not, suppose that they have any wish to do so. What would be the result of committing ourselves to any scheme of Chinese and foreign businessmen's cooperation to stop or localize the war? Nothing whatever, but that foreigners would earn the hostile ity of one contestant or the other, probably both, and sow the seeds of more anti-foreign feeling. They cannot interfere in any way without appearing to take sides; and that, whether between Chi Heieh-yuan and Lu Yung-hsiang, or Chang Tso-lin and Wu Pei-fu, they have not the slightest excuse for doing.
May we, in conclusion, suggest to the Chinese business organizations, that if they want wars stopped, they are the people to stop them. They may not be able to stay the present fight, having begun to think about it' rather Into in the day, although our Chinkiang correspondent's report of how the local chamber of commerce put a stop to conscription shows that the merchants still have a good deal of power if they. choose to use it. But until the people of China say how their country shall be governed, one outside can help them. Shanghai must apparently accept the situation of being an asylum for those afraid to live under their own rulers. But it has no intention of being their catspaw.
Toxyo, Sept. 3—Lieut. N. M. Toft, a British "Army language officer, died to-day at Ikao after a brief illness—Reuter's Pacific Ser-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.