Dec. 1.
"THE political situation is still very obscure but the clouds are, lifting and it is possible tos Janes opening through the mist. While heeds is Jess one is sure, we may venture to call attention to some of the landmarks, we are passing. First, then, it now seems certain that, we are not to have a war of the Yangtze Tuchuns in favour of. Wu Pei-fu and against the victorious armies of the North.
When Wu reached Wuchang we were told that at the conference held there he had organized Jengue of eight provinces. A military government was formed and for " brief period it seemed. ay though we were to see a war staged on a much greater scale than that which had just} collapsed through the defection' of Feng Vu-hsiang. Had the! professed aim of the confederates been attained, all Central China would have been involved in internecine strife. Fortunately, the acts of the leaders in that} notable gathering were promptly, disavowed by their followers. The Hupeh Provincial Assembly met and passed a resolution declining to allow the provine to be dragged into war. Ché- kiang next made its voice heard and it was goon evident that the striking distance of the capital and be himself relegated to the! overlordship of Manchuria. To the victors belong the spoils and while Chang may be willing to! relinquish much he will scarcely be content with less than the! elimination of his rival. Tuan Chi-jui, we are told, is to take! over Feng Yuchsiang's troops. If that be so, the Dictator will have at his' command a small but well trained army, and the pleasing possibility is indicated of recalcitrant Tuchuns being! sharply brought to heel. It may be that Tuan is determined to} rule as well as'govern and, if he can succeed in that, we ought! to see an end put to thegreign of shiily-shaily to which we have] become accustomed under recent! administrations.
There remains Sun Yat-sen, that stormy petrel of Chinese polities. It is significant that Sun has brought his family' away from Canton. One is inclined to hazard a guess that he searcely expects to go back. It is true that he has still' following! {in the Southern city but even if they raised the song "Will ye no come back again," we do not think that many voices would Join in the chorus. Dr. Sun's career has been a chequered and eventful one. He has been an outlaw with a price on his head, a hundred thousand taels if we! remember rightly, and has been the {dol of millions of his countrymen. He has been a wanderer! on the face of the earth and the ruler of one of the richest. provinees in China. He has borne! tie that held the signatories to the convention téjrether was not strong enough to stand the strain of a day's war. Indeed, it doubtful whether the leaders: himself with a certain dignity! in every role but the last, As a ruler he has been a conspicuous failure and if he has now abandoned his disastrous _at-themselves meant their action to be more than a gesture indicating' what they were prepared to do in certain eventualities. Had the: tempt at administration, he may have taken the first "step rehabilitating his reputation. But he must first free himself from provisional government at Peking) hastened to proclaim Chi Hsieh-yuan, Hsiao Yao-nan and other supporters of Wu to be traitors! and instantly deprived them of their offices, then, they might! have been goaded to fight; but in the absence of such provocation there was nothing to fight for but the personal affront to Wu Pei-fu and it was impossible to rally the people with that battle-cry. The conference had scarcely dissolved before the participants were, individually, telegraphing assurances of their support to Tuan Chi-jui and we may hazard a conjecture that they received in return an} answer that.reassured them that no steps to remove them from: office were contemplated. With' that assurance, the threatening portent dissolved like a picture 6n a screen, Wu Peisfu is back at Loyang! his Bolshevik connexions _which have ruined his career in Canton and rendered it unsafe for him to travel from Shanghai to Pe-King except by the circuitous route of Kobe and a Japanese steamer. Somehow one does! not see him cutting much of a figure in the capital. The Reds are rather under a cloud there! now and their protege Dr. Sun is bound to be suspect until he can offer some better system of democratic administration than that made in Moscow.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.