According to the press we scent to be closer every day to a serious resumption of hostilities, but if Ponetrates 2 very little way into the confidence of the local militarists he will discover more reasons every that there is going to be any fighting at all. All these northerners do have one ambition to which they are seriously and Sincerely devoted, and that is the destruction of Feng Vu-hsiang. They would genuinely like. 10 establish a reliable defensive on the Shantung-Kiangsu border and the Yellow River south of Taming-fu, arrange a tacit neutrality with Yen Usi-shan, and throw all Feng: tion's strength into Honan by way of the Peking-Hankow railway, overwhelming Feng suddenly and finally with thei and 9
It looks easy and simple from a military point of view and the physical obstacles seem trifling; but it appears that there are political obstacles which are all the more formidable because they cannot be. openly discussed whether in the press or in these numerous cent ences. The worst of it is, mot over, that they are obstacles which cannot be summarily removed but which must be allowed to remove themselves, like flood waters that cannot to hurriedly drained away but must be absorbed and evaporated in some places and patiently drained away through little trickles in others.
To put it more clearly, the rea! obstacles to effective Fengtien action against Feng Vu-hsiang or Chiang Kai-shek are Chang Chung chang, the governor of Shantung, and Chu Vu-pu, the Governor of Chihli, who are insuperable barriers to military reorganization and to civil reform within the Fengtien federation but whose abrupt removal might precipitate disorders that would result in the disruption and collapse of the whole organizition,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.