Peking, Feb. 9.
The natives of Kuangsi resident in the Metropolis, who are neither numerous nor an influential class, nor in any sense devoted to the interests of the Peking Government, are planning to hold a conference among themselves on Sunday, February 12, to discuss the parlous state of their fellow provincial who still have the misfortune to reside among their native hills. The premise of their discussion will be the incontrovertible fact' that conditions in Kuangsi are many times worse since the completion of Chen Chiung-ming's campaign of liberation' than they were in the days of Lu Yung-ting's "tyranny." It appears that simnlay conclaves are being held in other centres in other parts of China with a view to discussion of the same topic on the same premise.
Tue Moran or Hunan.
Herein there is fresh food for vather gloomy thought. In the spring of 19290 Wu Pei-fu through negative action, the withdrawal of his troops from the Hengchow district, afforded the people of Hunam an opportunity to throw off the tyranny of Chang Chin-yao. Immediately at his heels came Tan Yen-kai and Chao Hong-ti with the barefooted, half-armed First Hsiang Chun Division, and by heroic positive action. put Chang Chin-yao and his disorderly hordes out of Hunan and afforded the people of Hunan ai splendid opportunity to govern themselves and to establish a model provincial government. Conditions in Human are not worse than they were under Chang Chin-yao; that could not be. But they are anything but. ide: Instead of one outlander tyrant, Hunan has acquired a dozen native military despots and a weak Tuchun, who cannot maintain order but is nevertheless a Tuchun. For a cruel military autocracy she has exchanged something approaching anarchy. Here were high hopes and confident forecasts blasted.
That same summer Wu Pei-fu came en to Peking and broke the power of Tuan Chi-jui, with all his military prestige and__ his Japanese patronage. Great things were promised. There was to be a popular assembly which was to vote away all China's evils, unite the country and start it off on a new course. The very coolies in the streets of Peking prayed fcr Wu Pei-fu's victory and cheered "Old Tuan's' downfall. In place of-Tuan we have had Chin Yun-peng and company, under the patronage of Chang Tso-lin and Tsao Kun. Enough said; here were more high hopes blasted.
Tue ExaMpte or SHensi.
In the spring of 1921 Feng Yiihsiang, the Christian general and the super-policeman, went into Shensi in support of Yen Hsiang-wen and shortly succeeded to the Tuchunship. Shensi had known no peace since 1912. It had been ithe happy hunting ground of the biggest brigand armies in China, not to mention the so-called Southern troops who claimed the support of the Kuomintang, It suffered under some of China's worst Tuchuns, among whom Chen Shu-fan, the last, was not least.
Feng's expedition was regarded as a crusade; his assumption of the Tuchunship as a sure promise of peace at last. The upshot of it is that Feng keeps order in about a third of the province and that travelling is just about as unpleasant and dangerous as it ever was, while from his c#pital have come the most serious reports of eantiforeign demonstrations which have been heard in the land since the Boxer year.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.