Several days ago we were informed by telegram that platoon of British sailors had had to be landed at Swatow for the protection of the British mission hospital there. In a letter to-day our Swatow correspondent gives fuller details, lof the episode, and from this we jate enabled ' to realize how isgracefully the Chinese general' ere conducted himself. He had, it appears, just come from one jot his own hospitals where he had behaved in the manner of a typical hooligan to his own subordinates, and then with all the bluster that such a man is capable of, he attempted to play havoc with the British hospital Jand the work it was doing. What would have happened to the Chinese assistants but for the timely arrival of the foreign Jdoctor in charge we may well surmise, considering the temper shown by this military gentleman during his visit to the hospital, but so much a common place is "that in China that! jwe need not labour the subject. We do, however, have to face the fact that in order for a hospital, here Chinese soldiers wounded one of the phases of the interminable civil war in_ the Jcountry were being treated, to continue its work sary for British military guard to be landed. In numbers it was insignificant in comparison with the strength of the Chinese troops in that particular region, but it was the necessary gesture which brought an over-bearing land inconsiderate militarist to is sense—at least for the time of course, nothing short Jof a scandal that such an incident could have happened. We see here a man, who holds a nuilitary command, seizing upon the flimsiest pretext for trouble-maxing. He complains, forsooth, that the wounded officers; Jand men in the hospital are not having their wounds properly dressed, and instead of attempting to put matters to rights—if there were any ground for comlaint—there are at once threats, Jof execution and a display of! revolvers which form an interesting object lesson for those at Home who have up to now! resolved to remain in blissful ignorance of what can happen in this country. To} make matters worse thers are reports of massacres carried out by the Reds in the surrounding districts, but even so not even in Jwhat should be the sanctuary of 2 hospital is even a semblance of peace to be permitted. Again the} fact impinges itself upon us that ithe continued treatment of the soldier inmates of the hospital iwas only possible by the prompt] action of the British authorities showing General Hsieh Yo where the power unhappily placed in his hands stopped.
Those who have had any &xlence of wars in China realize] few others can do—especially those at Home—the heinousness lof this offence of the general, Swatow. One has only to tike the struggles in this province of ours to realize how much the soldiers of the contending armies lowe to the foreigner in China with his meilical science. There have been times when in a place like Chinkiang, for instance, every temple and public place has been littered with wounded, jand but for the attendance of lone civilian doctor and a second from the British Navy they would have had no care except what a few charitably disposed Chinese women, with no knowledge of medicine or surgery, offered them. It can also be recalled how a foreign hospital in Nanking has more than once had to larry on its work of attending to Chinese wounded soldiers when the bullets were expending themselves on the walls. Such service as these people—those in the missions and elsewhere— have given and continue to give should certainly have earned the gratitude especially of those in charge of armies whose business it is to see that their men are fit as soon as possible to take their place in the ranks, but here Hwe see exactly the opposite. We know that there is real gratitude from the bulk of the men who receive the attention to which we refer, but we can go no further. 'There are too many of the type of General Hsieh Yo among the: military officers of China, and progress in the establishment of a decent regime in the country' will be impossible until they get the lesson they require—and by! no means the kind of one that this particular individual had at
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.