May 14.
The following article is contributed by one who, speaking and reading Chinese fluently, is a close student of the Chinese press and Chinese affairs. It considers the Tientsin conference from a different angle to that taken by our Peking correspondent in the article published last week, though the upshot is unhappily the same.
The so-called Tuchuns' conference held recently in Tientsin attracted much attention in the Chinese press but passed, for the most part, unheeded by foreigners, It was not, however, in reality a conference of Tuchuns but a private meeting of the three most powerful leaders of that fraternity. Chang Tso-lin Manchuria, Tsao Kun of Chibli and Wang Chan-yuan of Hupeh are undoubtedly the three most powerful men in China to-day' and anything they decided on and determined to carry out has much more chance of being carried into effect. than the mandates of the President and his cabinet in Peking.
It would, perhaps, be overstating the case if we said that public opinion, so far as it is ticulate, regarded this confer-e.\ce as a meeting of three powerful conspirators but such a statement would not be very wide of the truth. For these three men are the embodiment of militarism er the rule of might, and the Chinese press professes to desire above all things the abolition of the military power and the restoration of representative government. What the people desire is peace and liberty to pursue their domestic affairs in quietness, neither harassed by brigands nor oppressed.7. rapacious soldiery. Thouga- il the subjects of discussion at the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.