Dee. 15, 'There is nothing so helpful in solving a difficult political problem as bringing it into the open' light, and from this point of lew we cannot help locking upon the Canton coup wholesome display of the So-jet's hand in this country. The brutally frank Bolshevism of the rabble administration now set up in Canton and the open participation of Red Russians in the movement sweeps away all possibility of camouflaging in the Occident the character of the rising in Kuangtung or the prospective movements in Shanghai, Hankow, Changsha, Mukden and other centres, The USSR. cannot pretend now to a benevolent interest in a Chinese "Nationalist" movement but, with all her capacity for impertinent! mendacity, must plead justification for using her consulates and her agents equipped with diplomatic passports to promote! Red revolution In a country to which these consular and other agents are duly accredited. Better still, these highly illuminoutrages in Canton will make it utterly impossible for British! and American statesmen, to mention no others, to rise Pompous hypocrisy and state their disbelief in the Soviet inion behind Chinese terjo demonstrations. They]
e to confess to the British and American publics that] this is real Bolshevism of the! most destructive type, directly fomented by the officials of the USSR, and, since such movements cannot be organized in day but must be the culmination of years of agitation, such confession will involve the further revelation that the world! has given the Soviet a free hand ie China for two or three years and that the public statements made on behalf of the Occidental Governments no more than a year azo were founded upon! either culpable ignorance, obstinate rejection of facts, or al desire to mislead public opinion deliberately.
If the Canton coup achieves 40} much as this abroad, which it may certainly do if the press in! Great Britain and America is alive to its opportunities, it will have been of inestimable value te the foreign communities in China. Locally, however, the effect of this amazing coxp on Chinese minds is going to be of even greater immediate importance. From the Kuo Min News Agency statement, which we published yesterday, it will have been noted that, at a meeting attended by the three Kuangsi generals, Li Chi-sen, Li Tsung-Jen, and Pei Chung-hsi, and by' Mr. Sun Fo, the local political situation was faced with a frankness that would have been impossible a week ago. The arch trouble maker and con-spirater, Wang Ching-wei, and his pink colleague Chang Fa-kuei, who has just been unseated by the Bolshevized riff-raff, are frankly denounced as responsible for opening Canton to this ruinous holdeaust. This, we take it, is support enough for the doubts that we have several times expressed of Wang Ching-wei's sincerity in his public anticommunist statements. It is frank recognition of the fact] that in playing the old game of "assing" red and pink backing) to create a base for themselves in Canton at the expense of Nanking's influence, so-as to be able te demand a supreme voice for themselves in Kuomintang councils, chose over-clever Cantonese have committed the age-old error of stretching out their necks under the Bolshevist axe for the greater convenience of the much cleverer and more ruthless conspirators who wield it, This is really'very wholesome and may have an effect: upon Chinese policy in this port} which the menace of such a situation as now exists in Canton has not had upon the apathy and self-satisfaction of this foreign community.
It has been felt for many weeks past that there were influences within the Kuomintang here that were blocking effect Chinese preventive _measures against the growth of the general strike and a state of terror, blocking Chinese police _cooperation with the municipal police, and leading many observers to feel, with some justice, that the eviction of the supreme directors of the campaign against the peace of Shanghai from vadquarters in Whangpoo Road would only serve to shift them into territory] where they would have more liberty of action." We believe that Mr. Sun Fo's denunciation of the Cantonese schemers, at'
ering attended by the generals, fixes the relity for this non-com-mitral, passive attitude towards the Red flood tide and, having been made publicly, is something of a challenge ti combat. A frank declaration of war from Nanking upon Soviet influence would, of course, be direct: y in the interest of the foreign communities in Shanghai and would at once relieve tension within' the ranks of thos: who appreciate the seriousness of Shanghai's danger. We hope, however, that if war comes it' will not again take the form of machine gun practice upon intimidated workmen or deluded yokels, but will commence with a denunciation of the-responsible patrons of all this Red activity and force the Municipal authorities to put really efficient checks upon the Soviet Consulate-General if not to eject the energetic comrades: from the Settlement.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.