July 10, We would venture to congratulate the Trustees of the Northern and Southern Boards of the Presbyterian Church in America on the firm stand they have taken against the Nation-st Government's attempt to check religious teaching in the Hangchow Christian College. The whole story set out in our columns yesterday by Dr. Robert Fitch is worth studying. The authorities of the College readily jaceepted, had indeed partly accepted in advance, the Nationalist Ministry of Education's requirements for a Chinese president, a majority of Chinese directors and a memorial every Monday to Dr. Sun Yat-sen. In the last respect the College seem decidedly to have been stretci:- ing a point, such ceremonials easily taking a form obnoxious to Christian teaching. But on the right of students to attend chapel or not as they pleased the Trustees stood firm. The local from the embarrassment of riches? Genius seems, somehow, to be allied to indigence and inherited wealth is a fatal handicap to those who would aspire to fame. The discipline of poverty hardens the will and tempers the resolution so that the poor directors were for giving way, pending revision of the treaties. We are bound to say we think their attitude in this was wrong, as shown by the reasonableness of the Trustees in America.
They say in effect to the Nationalist Ministry of Education:
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.