The Failure of Democracy Without a: People to Support It: The Kuomintang and the Provincial Autonomy Movement Tong Shao-yi's Views on Present Tendencies Mr, Tong Shao-yi, upon being told of the death of Dr. Sun Yat-sen made the following statement to a representative of the "North-China Daily News:
"The whole country will mourn Dr. Sun Yat-sen, whose life has been courageous devotion to the ideal of democratic government in China. We were not only fellow-provincial but natives of the same district, our homes being but eight forms of democracy and we have experimented with some of them find have not been very" successful. The experiments which fail bring certain opprobrium upon those who fey them, but such judgments are usually hasty' and without serious! importance. The fact that lure of these experiments has in no way. impaired the popular sup-Port. of democracy proves con clusively that to the Chinese people we shall forget everything about him but one outstanding fact and that is that he was the champion of democracy in China. Everything else will be forgotten. Every personal whim, every personal dis sension, every difference of opinion~ will be forgotten, Only the large fact of his life will remain, his struggle against despotism,' him struggle against corruption, his struggle for the right of the govern ed toa say in the government. And throughout the country as_ this thought sweeps the minds of the people, as this thought becomes the cry of the suffering millions, as men-speak it and write it and read it, a spirit will be abroad in the Iand which will. make itself felt and which in the end will shake Peking to its very foundations. For Peking is built on the sands of a Mongolian desert,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.