July 206
The announcement from London that as the result confer oe ace between Mr, Cham-and American Ambassadors a purely judicial inquiry is to be held on the events of May 30 will be received with unfeigned satisfaction by the—general foreign public in China, For ome weeks past the "North-China Daily News" has consistently urged that this was the only effective way of reaching a solution and we have received many expressions of approval] from both Chinese and foreign readers, When the French Minister in Peking resigned from the Diplomatic Commission we urged anew that the way we thereby opened to a judicial quiry and this view may very. well have been held in London, especially as, since the Comte de Martel's withdrawal, nothing, whatever has been done by ti Body to advance a settlement. It is an open secret that the Diplomatic Body had very nearly yielded to the clamour of the Chinese agitators and pronounced sentence in respect May 80 without trial. 'The mildest way of describing such a course would be to call it al grave error, We are not concerned with the details of the' sentence nor with the manner in which it was stayed. The important point is that it hi been stayed and that judicial action is now to precede diplomatic as it was obvious from the first that it should.
One matter, ho needs to be made ¢lear there is good deal of misunderstanding about it. Directly after the events of May 30 the Municipal Council decided that a judicial inquiry into the affair must be held and without delay it conveyed this view to the Consular' Body, making it clear at the, same time that it, the Council, was ready to do whatever might! be thought best for the further ance of an inquiry. On June) 6, it will be remembered, the Consular Body sent a note to) the Chinese Commissioner for Foreign Affairs, in which they said: "There will also 1at~ ter of course be an investigation by the authorities. concerned into the action of the police officer concerned, besides which the competent courts stand) ready to deal with any complaints." Within a very few) days of this statement, however, the Diplomatic Body ar nounced that it was sending si delegates to Shanghai to report) on the facts of the case. Subsequently their powers were enlarged to enable them to trea: with the Chinese delegates also sent from Peking, for a settlement on the spot. The negotiations broke off after three or four meetings and the delegates returned to Peking, whither all negotiations were transferred. At a later date we have been told that the foreign delegates tade no recommendations and merely reported on the situation.. What they. reported beyond what the Diplomatic Body must have or could have known already from despatches it [would be interesting to learn. The delegates held no inquiry worthy of the name; whatever they did, was behind closed doors; and their general goings on, though doubtless well meant, were exactly calculated to deepen Chinese suspicions. That they did not make any recommendations to the Diplomatic' Body is no merit: they should rely have recommended the judicial inquiry which the Consular Body had forecast and the Council from the very firstjus last Friday, General Si had earnestly desired. The only practical result of diplomatic intervention has been to take the initiative out of the hands of the people most intimately concerned in the whole affair and to delay the holding of the pub-lie judicial inquiry which alone offered a means of arriving at common agreement as to facts and an equitable way of apportioning retribution and compensation if such were re-judicial inquiry is now to be held has this' further advantage, namely, that it will pin down the settlement of the dispute to that point at which it originated, namely, the affair of May 30, All other issues which have been dragged {into the controversy—beyond what happened on that day are entirely extraneous and to allow them to be lumped in with the tlement of that particular quarrel would be hardly less total than the Diplomatic Body's policy of pronouncing sentence without trial. The "North-China Daily News" has consistently urged that there are two issues jand that they are entirely di tinct: on the one side, the affair of May 30; on the other, the larger questions on which' Chinese national feeling has begun \to be aroused. We are not in the least unsympathetic with that feeling. Long before these troubles began, we drew attention to the irregularities connected with the Mixed Court, the scandalous sale of patents of nationality and the injustices resulting from divided consular jurisdiction, And as far back when the Chinese advisory committee was introduced, we pressed for full Chinese representation on the Council. But these questions have nothing whatever to do with the events lof May 80. There should be no discussion of them until that matter is out of the way. To negotiate about them now would simply be to teach the agitators that they have only to make lamour to get whatever they want, irrespective of justice or reason.
We emphasize this most strongly, bec there appears} be a serious danger of the intervention of amateur diplomacy in the direction of shortsighted concessions. Such could only be regarded by the Chinese an encouragement to further! demands and so far from any settlement resulting, the outcome might be only a fresh boiling up of passion. The strike has reached a point now when there appears every likelihood of its dying a natural death. For the welfare of Chinese as well as foreigners we venture to say most earnestly that that is far the best thing that could happen even at the cost of some more days' delay, and that any concessions at this precise moment on points unconnected with the original dispute, enabling the agitators to claim a victory, would only lead to a repetition jof violence a few months hence, The students and labour leaders were permitted by the Chinese to take hold of the incident of May 30 and to use it for thétr own ends, without a thought of
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.