Sept. 3.
Tur weary task of trying to take the slanders on Shang-Fai ano its British commanity pubtivhed abroad brings us into conflict with an article by Mr. Bertrand Russell in the "Nation Athengum" of July 18. No sensible person in China wastes time, under ordinary conditions, in replying to Mr. Russell, whose views of this country would appear to be formed entirely by what confirmation he could get for his own prejudices out of the least trustworthy elements in the student body, But when the "Nation & Athenteum" publishes an article by him, it cannot unnoticed. In passing, it is much to be regretted that a paper of such standing should have opened its columns to a contributor 90 eqntvocal, This is what we find Mr. Russell saying With rogatd to the Shanghai! shooting, some of the facts are still im debate, others are now generally admitted." The following facty are mot in dispute: the crowd owteide the police station was unarmed; no notice was given of the intention to fire upon them; the order to fire was given in English, and therefore not understood by" most, of the crowd; the Tung began ten seconds ster' the order was given; many of those who were hit were! shot in the back, showing that they were trying to disperse, but were not given tints to do so. Other proportionate smonber of sounded. very non-British person, and. al-alme every British mniseionery, who hus spoken abet the affair Was pronowenced tat the British axthoritics mere ut jrtificd tx their ation. Por example, Dr. J. W. Clive, tor-monly head of the missionary college St Soochow, who saw the whole thing, says! "Twos not! experting to see the police fire, was shocked when they dtl fire, and have been sorry about ft' ever Who started ths abominable lie that "about seventy people were killed"? We met it im Mr. Sherwood Eédy's slanderous arttole with whioh we dealt last week and netaralig, as it was in the air, Mr, Bertrand Russell, with his peculiar proclivity for saying everything that he cant to the: detriment of his own country—one imagines, with some flea of enhancing his own self-importance—has sniffed it out with ghoulish delight. The facts are ven in the police report published in the Municipal Gazette of August 6, and, as we said before, the police would be very careful net to give anyone a chance of tripping them up in such a matter. Here they a1 Attacks by the strikers or their! sympathizers resulted in the death of two Chinese and one foreigner. The Police in the suppression of the rite killed 22 Chinese and 80, on Ni efforts of the Police to suppress Tawlesaness led to the arrest of 02 orsons for floting or assault, the apprehension of 22 others' for tearing down Manicipal Prociamations, and the procectRion of 85 persons for disseminating inflamemaand antioreign litera. these, with a few! exceptions, and $4' other persons ehatged for other offences arising out of the strike were extremely Jeniently dealt with, either by being cautioned, fined or imprisoned for, short periods.
As regards the evidence, such as it- is, which Mr. Ruseell adduces, the statement about "almost every British missionary," ete, is as false as that about the deaths, Of Dr. Cline's evidence, it is felt by many persons that! his position in tHe crowd was not at all such as to. justify the! vehemence of his comment. Of Mr, Harry Westnidge's testi-' many, not one word is said. Yet! Mr, Westnidge was unquestionably the most important witness of all, He was nearest to the! actual shooting; fifteen years' residence in the interior of China for the China Inland Mission had brought him more than once into contact with Chinese mobs and taught him what Chinese this to give weight to his words, he said emphatically, in the Mixed Court trial of the students, that he considered the police could have done nothing but what they did and that, in their place, he would have felt compelled to do the like. But testimony of this Kind does not suit the purpose of men like Mr. Bertrand Russell and Mr. Sherwood Eddy.
The impression conveyed by the sentence "other crowds were fired upon during the next six days" is so much like the picture drawn by Mr. Eddy of the police marching about Shanghai firing indiscriminately upon all and sundry, that it quite looks as if the two had been collaborating. Both descriptions are of course essentially false. But—
Chat malm et fou dangéreux ensemble tout lee dens. It is noteworthy that neither of these writers has a word to say about the murderous, cold-blooded attack by Chinese from the root of the New World on June 6, nor of the marder of Mr. Mackenzie, nor of repeated as-salts by the crowd, of the violence of intimidators, of the flood of mendacious leafers and lectern poured ott by the agttaors.
In another pert of the article) Mr. Russell recommends his readers to obtain a little caited "Citina's Case," if they] "wish to see how the matter appears to eminent Chinese intellectuals." We have seen it; and we deeply regret that men of the standing of Mr. V. K. Ting and Mr. Lo Wen-kan should have been among those who put their names to it. The internal evidence of the pamphlet shows that the! writers must have had before them the full versions of both sides, melding the verbatim report of the Mixed Court trial mentioned above, and they have! carefully suppressed every s¢rap evidence which told against
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.