Jan. 15.
This year, as last, a German is offering himself for election to the Municipal Council, Mr. C. Stepharius, a well known resident, whom many Britons would feel inclined to support were their country and his enjoying the peace that was broken in August 1914. As they are not, Britons must see to it that Mr. Stepharias does not get elected. We doubt whether this year any Briton will quarrel with the logic of this statement, but for the benefit of any who may still be befogged by creditable but academic concep-! Yions it may be as well to expand it. The Germans are very much in a minority and to this fact must be added the international character of the Settlement. The two facts taken together would before the war have made us the firat to defend German interests. for before the war it was to the interests of the community as a whole that the Germans should be given the fullest possible consi. deration. Now, the community would be best served if every German were turned out of it. When German puts himself up for election, even supposing that he is considering the community as whole, he is symbolically incor-parating with it people whom the community as a whole does not want, people whom it considers positively harmful, not only to itself but to the country in which it is situated. China, unfortunately from our point of view, and—as we consider—most unwisely from its own, is at peace with Germany and as the land on which the Settlement stands is her property and not ours we have to put up with having Germans in our midst and leave them in the enjoyment of such rights as by Treaty they are entitled to. Beyond that, however, we are not called upon to go and would be exceedingly foolish to go.
For all the evidence of the past seventeen months shows that—even if it were desirable to have Germans here—we could never trust any of them to put international interests before their country's. The first thought of a German on the Council would not be "'is t to the interests of Shanghai?' abut, ''is this to the interests of my people?' That is another vital difference that the war has made.
We can no longer trust any German because while any particular
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.