July 13, The three million dollars contributed by Chinese bankers in Peking to the assembled generals is a bad omen, Further details obtained indicate regular procedure in raising the money. The Nationalist Ministry' of Finance had cognizance of the transaction. The loan is youred on the 24 per cent. Cui toms surtax in Tientsin and the $8,000,000 actually paid is an installment of a total Loan eventually to be forthcoming, of nine millions, So the story of one banker being fined a lakh, because he did not "ante-up" quickly enough, may be apocryphal, On the other hand, we may be fairly certain that the bankers did not find the money with much alacrity. These small hand-to-mouth Toans are ruinously wasteful and destructive of sound finance. To whom or for what the money goes, nobody is told. Current expenses? But why not are these met by the ernments out o of the special funds raised in advance for the northern campaign? In all conscience Na king got enough out of Shanghai for this cause; and there on the whole, so much less might have been pected, that the campaign cannot have been particularly costly. Or is the money to be considered as a voluntary expression of Peking's gratitude for being delivered from its former tyrants? Or is it simply the modern equivalent of the time-honoured practice of handing over a conquered city to three days' looting by the troops, a million a day?
The amount extracted is not but its significance is great. For' the people of China it naturally means that there is no difference between Nationalist and the opponents have so bitterly denounced for grinding the] poor man's face. As generals have helped themselves from the public purse in times gone by, so they are evidently prepared to go on doing. To the Shanghai bankers, that the generals China reck nothing of their economic conference, their well thought project of financial reorganization and their threat withhold funds till their demands have been met. And in this connection, the proposed disbandment of troops under a special committee, of which every single member is an offi-as published by the Nan-Military Council two days ago, will be viewed with general suspicion, The proposals made by the bankers at their Economic Conference were essentially of fan all embracing nature. They lumped together in one comprehensive scheme, rehabilitation of railways, road-making, river conservancy and a genuine disbandment, cutting down the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.