No Our Chengtu correspondent has coined a title which fits with infinite appropriateness the place at the Eaton Gorge on the 'Upper Yangtze to which pirates take their loot. Nothing could demonstrate' better the evil re-ute of the place than such title as the "Bias Bay of the: Yangtze," and there can be no doubt in the mind of anybody' that it is one of these places which demand a great deal of special attention, We shall not ay how, at the moment—that is: Jo question for tacticians versed in amphibious warfare—but its existence brings up several other questions connected with the Yangtze. That particular "Bias Bay" is in No Man's Land—the debatable territory between Yang, Sen and Tang Song-chi—and s0 ithe pirates are specially favour led, but if it were not, does an, body imagine that conditions there would be any better? Would any effective effort be made by either of these military Headers to extirpate a band of people who are every whit as enterprising as those of His Bay in the south, unless it suited his particular book at the moment. Unfortunately the most: that could be expected would be enrolment into one or other!
Jarmies, where they would probably secure recruits against the. time when they could resume, their wonted activities.
As we have pointed out, this particular resort on the Upper Yangtze is in No Man's Land, but what of the instances that! happen elsewhere on its banks? Within the past week or two: firing has again taken place on foreign vessels upon its waters, while there is nothing new in that, it brings up the subject Jof the total lack of discipline which prevails. Whatever be their general attitude to the! activities of foreigners in China, tone hardly expects that governments along the Yangtze wish to have daily quarrels about such shootings, yet the fact is that they display a total inability to control their subordinate commanders. Which, being put into other words, shows that every' general who has a division or leven a brigade under him regard, unself as having.-a semi-independent status, And if, it.is thei whim of such people to go in for shooting, then there will be shooting.
No better proof of this independent attitude could be found 'a case in Chinkiang when Chiang Kai-shek eatsed an troops of his army, this following, promise' given to foreign officials. Along came a subordinate general who calmly order-fed the notices to be torn down, jand then turned the place into barracks., While there is nothing striking or novel about such a Procedure, it is a good example of this independence, and so long the warring governments are funable to control it, there can bbe no hope that these Yangtze outrages will stop. The only way seems to be to deal individually with each instance, and to attempt to evolve measures for holding each commander personally to what President Wilson described as "strict accountability." There is to-day no hesitation about returning fire—when directed against a man-jof-war or against merchant} ships under escort—but it seems almost necessary that in certain eases there should be landing parties which would be in a posi-ion fo demand further explana tion.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.