Feb. 12, "The Times" of January 13 devotes a leading arti brigandage in China, some extracts of which deserve to be quoted. It notes that whereas in Turkey, Sicily, Greece and the Northern Balkans outlawry has been or is being put down, "in China brigandage is once more profession which attracts an annual multitude of recruits,' driving the farmer, shopkeeper and merchant to desperation. "But when, to use the current phrase, the best people do it, the efforts of well-intentioned authority are unlikely ta succeed." Th@ article then deals with the revolt of Tang Song-chi, "one of the best known of the Tuchuns who marched from south China to the Yang. zo," and continues He himself seized the General Manager of the Peking-Hankow Railway and held him to ranson in the approved manner til the captive's friends had paid £10, 900, He has been permitted nevertheless to withdraw to Japan, sped on his way by the Nanking!
Government, which Provided him and his stam with their travelling expenses, Such gentle dealing with official bri-bandage is likely to encourage other generals to imitate Tang.—Again, in the case of the recent attempted coup d'état at Foochow "the Central Government was indignant; it sent a cruise:
Foochow; "it expostulated"" with the delinquent General Lu THRE wheter it can or will aryes:
punish him is doubtful." "The Times" goes on: is just this uncertainty that Randicaps the Chinese in the Regotintions now proceeding with foreign Powers on the subject tthe abolition of extraterritoriality. Before they make concessions foreign Governments want t be scaured that their subjects' residing in China will obtain rea. fonable protection from the authorities of the country and that military or civilian brigands Who molest them will repent it. As long as generals can kidnap important officials and plunder the cities which they are supposed. to defend without any risk Being shot, so long will thes Governments decline to believe the power of Nanking to protect their own nationals, however much they may credit General Chiang Kai-shek, Dv. ©. 7. Wang, and their colleagues with good intentions, The article ends with the! ¢ogent observation that "the! execution of a brigand-general or two might strengthen thei faith in the new Chinese regime.
These comments are the mors important in that they come from a paper which has. shown itself consistently sympathetic with the Nationalist regime, and has again and again refrained from drawing the obvious conclusion from facts it has noted, out of an evident desire not to seem impatient with the new. order, What it says now is simply an elaboration of the point stressed in the recent. British aide mémoire, namely, that the British Government are ready to enter into negotiations Jor the abolition of extraterritoriality "as soon as political conditions in China render it possible to do so." The most lenient observer coild not say that this necessary stipulation, which merely reiterates what Sic Austen Chamberlain said at Birmingham two yerrs ago, was even within measurable distance of being fulfilled,. It is not as if it were only a case of brigandage in remote corners of the country where foreigners rarely go, It is what is happening in provinces which are supposed to be immediately under Nanking's control. Take the records only of the past week. It is only eight days since three lady members of the C.LM. were captured by bandits' on one of the chief water-ways of Kiangsi. And recently one of our correspondents in that province, report ing that the town of Lungehuen had again been sacked by outlaws, added that "the wonder is that robbers find anything worth taking after so many visits." Kiangsi, it may be added, is particularly prolific in Communists. From Central Anhui a correspondent has lately written that! the Post Office is unable to send money in its mails owing to the number and boldness of creek pirates: on both which accounts business is suffering severely. And to-day our Hankow correspondent sends a report of the scourge of Communism in southeast Hupeh, only some hundred miles from the capital. Reports of this kind have become so common that local readers of newspapers now almost pass them by. But it would seem that they are beginning to sink in abroad, We foreign residents in China, though at times the sharpes! critics of things as they are, are also capable of being the: most lenient. We can under.
people abroad cannot enormous difficulties confronting a Government that tries to restore order out of chaos and to knit together again the myriad fragments of organized government so utterly shattered eighteen years of so-called dem-"administration. Nor can we forget that this attempt resulted in three quarters of last. year being wasted in yet more civil strife, One might argue indefinitely as to where the blame exactly lay, though it was noticeable that, on the whole, foreign sympathy was with Nanking in last yelt's troubles, But we have said before and woul venture to repeat that Nanking erred in trying to draw the strings of centralization too tight, For all practical purposes. China was unified after the fall of Peking. 'There was a common understanding and partnership among the leaders in different provinces and we cannot! help thinking it would have been Wise to accept the fact and use it for the restoration of order' by each man in his own district, leaving constitutional is and questions of precedence to be settled later. Now at the beginning of the New Year a fresh opportunity for work of this kind is presented to Nanking. A year ago its hold over, the Yangtze Valley appeared absolute; but civil war weakens ed its grip and let loose the forces of disorder. For the moment war is in-abeyance and there appears no immediate danger of its revival. If every effort of Nanking were now concentrated on restoring order.ia the Valley, on putting down brigands, getting taxation into shape, enabling trade to flow again, the ultimate result for all China would be magical. Every province would surely be drawn. into the orbit of the prosperity that would quickly appear, They could not stand aloof. The problems of centralized government
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.