The principal difieulty of the: Ministry of Education ix that does not seem to understand the difference between a public and a private school. The right of men under the constitution of the Republic of China to associate for educational purposes 10t be} nied, There are certain schools, ike the Government schools in Peking or the Southea: in Nanking, which Surely can make whatever regulations it deems suitable, But the largest part of the higher educational activity of China fs conducted by private institutions, controlled by trustees appointed by, the donors of the funds or their ents and managed in accordance ith their wishes. Most of these {institutions are connected with religious activity, with the Catholic or Protestant Churches and were founded as a by-product of missionary enterprise. The funds con tributed were originally. ints for the propagation of the Christia faith in China and, if they hav been used for educational work in China, it was either because those in control of the funds were favour-
Many of the students in missionary schools feel that their careers are being endangered because the schools refuse fo register with the) Ministry of Education. These students may be bitterly opposed to the Peking Government; they may be Communists or members of Kuomintang or provincial autonomists, Yet they see no inconsistency in their own refusal to recognize the Peking Government and their insistence that the naries should recognize without registration xrs'are endangered, even their ability to oppose the Government, and to fight its evils, are lessened. Diplomas, to be official, must be issued by'schools which are registered with the Ministry of Education and must bear the signature of that—Ministry's" Commissioners scattered about' the country. All other diplomas are unofficial and may be so regarded by government oficial when they so desire The effect of such a course would be to disenfranchise the holder of fan unofficial diploma if his only claim to enfranchisement were his educational qualification, In a word, if a man desiring to vote for a member of a Provincial Assembly or to be a member of such a body, possessed no other qualification than that he was a graduate of a middle school, he might be excluded, if his diploma were from an unregistered school. Law students, with diplomas from unregistered schools, may not be allowed to practice' in the courts. In some of the Government universities, graduates from unregistered middle schools are not admitted as regular students, Attendance, then, at an unregistered school places' certain disabilities upon the student, which many of them resent, because they thatthe whole problem easily be solved by re The Other Side On the other hand, the opponents of registration point to hundreds of Chinese who have risen in public life without the advantage of a diploma from a registered school. The St. John's clique in the Wai chiaopu is an example of men who have held the highest offices after graduating from a Christian institution. But these men also had other qualifications, such as property, or education' abroad, or exceptional opportunities, because of the political situation who insist upon registration claim that the situation has changed and they prefer to get along without subterfuges. They want to go to the Christian schools, but they do not want the disabilities with which such attendance burdens them.
An Obscurantist Policy The danger to the Christian in-' stitutions in registration lies the ably disposed toward the creation of a Chinese leadership in their churches or because they felt that education lay Christianity's greatest service to China,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.