It is difficult to believe that law-abiding shopkeepers or their shop-assistants could be guilty. of such an act of barbarism and cruelty. The Government had information that some of the men were not members of the mercantile community at all, Many of them were disbanded soldiers, discharged policemen, city ruffians and bad characters from the villages who had been hired at the rates of 12 dollars a month and. 60
Some of these hirelings were even bandits and men sent from Chen Chiung-ming's forces.
Not content with the damage already done, the Merchant Volu oded to terrorize general body of merchants of the whole city, foreing them to close their shops, "notwithstanding the fact that the only pretext which they ever had for such a course, that is, the Government's detention of their, arms shipment, had been removed' by the return of the arms stipulated. The Volunteers paraded through the streets, armed to the teeth, in groups, large and small, and compelled those business-houses and shops which wanted to do buxiness—and these were in the majority—to close their shops literally' at the point of the 'The result, of course, wa serious for' the commercial and i dustrial life of the city and the surrounding country.—It was now plainly evident to the citizens of Canton (what had been known to the Government authorities already) that the purpose of the group of conspirators among the Volunteers was nothing less than the overthrow of the Government by bringing about.|the paralysis of the political and commercial metropolis. Obviously the Government could not sit by and watch a gang of armed men instituting a reign of terror among. law-abiding citizens and at same Reports had been received for some time of plots made at Hong-Kong between Chan Lim-pak, the former Commandant of the Merchant Volunteer Corps, and_ the agents of Chen Chiung-ming. Sums of money had been advanced by the former to the latter. Several weeks previously the M.V.C. had already imposed a levy not only. on shops which were members of the M.V.C. but on other shops as well—the ostensible object being towards making a contribution to the warchest of the Government in return for the arms,—and these funds were diverted also for Chen Chiung-ming's use. The Government had every ground for believing that it was intended to take ad-outage of the absence of a large number of troops on the Northern Expedition for Chen Chiung-ming to counter-attack on the East River: front, in spite of the fact that the Government had ordered the siege of Waichow to be raised and a large portion of the Eastern front to evacuated in order to effect a truce with Chen Chiung-ming so that he, Day of the Republic, while the:
{on the 10th October, the National too, if he had a spark of patriot loft in him, might devote his energies Volunteers were landing on the to fight the common enemy of the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.