June 21.
Try as we may to be neutral, we venture to say that no foreigner who has read the recent] telegrams from Peking has begrudged Chang Tso-lin the adfmivation that he deserves for taking the bull by the horns. His assumption of the post of] Generalissimo, which amounts an appointment of himself as} dictator over the North, is undoubtedly a desperate gesture! made in a very critical moment, It is a defiance of every person, idea and slogan that has _been popularized in China by Soviet Jor Kuomintang propaganda; and there is every reason to believe that it is also a defiance of th whole junior group in the Fengtien party. It is as bold, frank jand honest a reaction against all the hocus-poons and hypo-ensy of Red publicity and Red conspiracy as the very similar reactions in Latin Europe, and, whatever we think of the exipediency of the step or the political justification for it, we must confess that it is an' unusual thing for a Chinese political Header to do since all possibility lof compromise or retreat is jet-tisaned with a single flour The casual reader may perhaps fail to grasp precisely what Generalissimo Chang has done. First of all he has rebelled against all the make-believe ithe. past fifteen years, all the dishonest efforts to exploit dis-Jorder and the ignorance and peopl the name of one imhetplesne of the Chinese ported political theory or another, each as ill-China's needs as the la: serving as excellent cai for such raiding expedi the present "Nationalist cupation of the Yangtze Valley. To all intents and purposes he has made himself king of North China, vesting in himself the function of Government, sweeping aside the Governing Cabinet, and preparing the way for new kind of Cabinet that will be to all intents and purposes. no more than a Grand Council.
"Then he has denounced in no} uncertain terms the one thesis that is the life and breath of "Nationalism," the essential belief that the aggressive, tyrran ical, imperialistic foreigner is responsible for all China's troubles Jand that patriotism imposes upon every son of Han the primary, Jduty of helping to extirpate the foreigner and all his works. This, at the moment, when this tenet of the "Nationalist" creed has been popularized throughout many provinces and has penetrated even into the North, is a bolder step than would be the assumption of Imperial dignities. Marshal Chang is recklessly furnishing his enemies with the very sort of propaganda ammuni-ition that they hanker after.
While he had Wellington Koo to echo every anti-foreign sentiment expressed by Eugene Chen, ithe Fengtien-leader could- not be Successfully denounced as a "cunning dog of the Imperialists." Now we shall learn, 23 ison as the posters can be printed and stuck up, that he is the supreme Pooh-Bah of all running true patriots, the handy implement of the murderous British jand the treacherous Nipponese. The mob, at twenty cents a head, Jotherwise known as the peasants land workers, can be wrought up to an ecstatic frenzy in a crusade against the Manchurian militarist and his Imperialistic ma ters. Worse than all this, it not unlikely that a certain number of influential juniors in the Fengtien group, who will think {that they have lost face because lof the old Marshal's brusque re-Hiection of their advice and befeause of the finality with which their correspondence with Chiang Kai-shek has been broken off, will be half-frightened and half-intrigued by Southern propaganda into thinking that the Jcixcumstances justify treachery.
The local representatives of Northern much surprised by the Ta Yuait Shuai's assumption of dictatorial powers as though he had gone to the other extreme and _announced his submission to Moscow, and they are still wagging their heads dubiously." They hold up Yuan Shih-kai and Chang Hun as horrible examples. They say that if Marshal Chang had taken this step a year ago, before the bulk of China was so demoralized by Soviet and Kuomintang propaganda, when his followers were whispering about making! him "King of Liao," a bold as-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.