Peking, May 26.
With reunion a hopeful prospect the disbandment of China's superfluous troops has suddenly become a widely discussed ''wen-t'i" in Chinese political circles. Foreigners have been talking about it for years, and individual Chinese have for various reasons advanced many schemes for reducing the army.
Among the militarists these have usually been schemes designed to reduce the other fellow's forces, making possible at the same time the retention, or even increase, of their own. Among the high civil officials disbandment has been seized upon and advocated as a good excuse for a foreign loan because it was apparent that the subject made a strong appeal to foreigners. The discussion has gone so far in the past six or seven years that there are a number of points upon which there is no need for argument. One is that the army is much too big and unwieldy to train and equip properly and should therefore be reduced for the sake of efficiency. Another is that the presence of troops in a neighbourhood does not promote peace, order or trade and that the preservation of internal peace is therefore not an excuse for the multiplication of divisions and mixed brigades. Another is that in its present state of decentralization neither the army as a whole, nor any units in it, would be of service for national defence and that China will never have a national army that will be a credit to the country until intensive training has been made possible through reduction, selection and centralization under the direction of some absolute military authority in the capital.
Granting that the present size and organization of the army militate against its uses for the! maintenance of internal order and national defence, there is left no excuse for its existence which would make an appeal in an Occidental country. The only apology for its existence is that it brings to a head and a solution conflicts of political theory and conflicts of personal ambition which would otherwise be insurmountable—barriers to progress and reform. This "may some day make an appeal to the student of Chinese political evolution, but in the immediate present it cannot be expected to intrigues the farmer whose grain fields have served as a battle ground nor the merchant who has been ruined by looting soldiery or by the loss of shipments on occupied railways. There can therefore be no argument advanced against disbandment which would make a practical appeal to any considerable element in the Chinese nation.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.