One of the signs of the times, in the opinion of the diplomats and others, was the somewhat discourteous behaviour of Mr. H. H, Kung at a reception given him by Mr. Chen of the Y.M.C.A. at the local 'Western Returned Students' Club Mr. Chen is, by the way, one of, the translators of the Sax Min Chu-i, Practically all the guests were English-speaking returned students and there were besides a number of foreign guests, including at least two Ministers of major Powers, who understood little if any Chinese. Mr. Chen, when speech time came, made the usual graceful introductory remarks, welcoming the guests and Mr. Kung, and then asking Mr. Kung to address the company. Mr. Kung speaks English very fluently ut, in reply to Mr. Chen's English introduction, he spoke for half an hour in Chinese, without interpreting his own remarks or asking anyone else to do so. This was $0 unusual, so pointedly unusual, that one of the foreign Ministers' could not refrain from remarking fairly audibly that he hed enjoyed and profited by Mr. Kung's address but that he would certainly have derived more instruction from it if his Chinese scholarship had been more nearly equal to Mr. Kung's erudition.
This affair did not pass without newspaper comment and various speculations upon its significance have been locally aired. By some it is supposed to be a subtle way of indicating to the foreigner that henceforth Chinese will be the language of social intercourse between natives and foreigners in this country. Whatever the incidental pur-ose of the long uninterpreted address in Chinese, no one has any doubt that its fundamental purpose was to insult by ignoring a group of foreign guests that included s eral members of the Diplomatic Body.
Mr. Kung is not an obscure nor an irresponsible figure. The Chinese press frequently dwells on the fact that he is an intimate friend of Feng Yi-hsiang, brother-in-law to Mrs. Sun Yat-sen and Mrs.
Chiang Kai-shek, and high in the councils of the Kuomintang. He is well known to all classes of for~ eigners who have been in Shansi, for he ix a mission school product end the nominal head of a missionary college at Taiku, while he is closely linked with British Impenalism through his firm, the Hsiang Chi Company, which represents the A.P.C.-in Shansi.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.