May 29.
Cums may be, as Peking correspondents assure us, in dire straits for cash with which to settle her accounts at the Dragon festival which falls on the 31st of this month, but she has a plethora of some other things. She has too many soldiers, too many Tuchuns and too many politicians. We can look back to the time when the country was agitating for a constitution and when the hope that she would one day have @ parliament sent thrills of hope through the nation's heart. Now there are three puliaments contending for the honour of saving China and there seems to be a consensus of opinion that the only hope of achieving unity for this distracted country lies in re-convening the representatives of the people and setting them to find a solution for the difficulties with which the Government is confronted, Looking back on the history of China's parliaments does not encourage optimism that the experiment will be successful. The first parliament was convened by Yuan Shih-kai to give a show of legitimacy to his assumption of the Presidency. Foreign Powers refused to recognize him as the head of the Chinese Republic unless his position were endorsed by a responsible legislative body. Yuan acted with his accustomed promptitude. He convened and cajoled the parliament until he got the gift he wanted and then promptly sent them packing about their business. The interminable discussions of impracticable schemes were to him an intolerable irritant and China's first body of legislators were lucky that nothing worse befell them than to be dismissed ignominiously by the man they had made their master.
The second parliament, convened by Li Yuan-hung, was scarcely less unfortunate than the first. It passed one resolution with great speed and absolute unanimity. That was that legislators should be remunerated for their services at the rate of
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.