Moscow turned its attention to the East in 1919 and 1920 after a strong anti-Red reaction had set in in Europe and America, with the sole. purpose of attacking the Occident with economic weapons: through the reduction of all Asis to chaos. China was so well on tha' way to confusion that she offered a particularly fertile field—a field kept open and free to disruptive influence by the punctilious regard on the part of the Powers—for er political independence, her right to self-determination, and ty their: sentimental consideration for her, legitimate aspirations and her! Oriental amour propre. 'The Russian agitators knew from the outset that if China's down-hill gait' could be accelerated, if she could be driven of led to her own complete undoing, no single Power would dare to intervene and no. group of Powers could be brought to sanction a reasonable scheme of intervention. It looked safe and easy.
The primary objects of Red endeavour, therefore, were to wreck the Occidental investment in China by fostering conditions which would make both trade and residence in the country impossible. The come plete ruin of China might not mean the ruin of Europe and certainly could not mean the immediate rain of America, but it would be a lena stride in the ruin of Great Britain at least—and all communists are agreed that the one field in which 8 dictatorship of an intelligent industrial proletariat might succeed is England. To initiate the experiment, however, England must first be ruined. Every capitalistic and bourgeois institution must be reduced to bankruptcy. The cutting off of the China trade might not every cargo hundred men out of work in England and every man out of work and hungry possible rebel against the exist-order. From the Red point of view, therefore, it was worth spend-something to ruin China, Expenditure Not Fruitless And from this point of view, six or seven years of endeavour and the expenditure of something like, $40,000,000, have not been fruitless. America has spent more in the form of material supplies to the Chinese Government in the same period with no return at all—not even good will oF respect—and with no prospects except a promise of paper issued on security which Red enterprise has undermined. The ejection of the communists from Canton and the defeat of the Kuominchun may spectacular failures of Russia's more spectacular efforts, but they not even promise to undo the damage her more insidious efforts have done nor do they eradicate the it which her agitators have instilled into ten of thousands of addled minds whose daily workings will continue to keep China in turmoil, render reasonable and friendly relations between China and the world impossible and effeetively check the development political, industrial and commercial stitutions such as China need and owes herself and the world.
Before Russian Red influence was felt in Chin, the official caste had already acquired a taste for disorder, for fishing in troubled waters, which was found to. be exceedingly lucrative. The revolt against, discipline snd order was confined, however, to the official classes and was held in check to some extent by a consciousness of alien seruting. "Of sense of responsi Occidental Powers acted ax checks unchecked military and "pali adventurers. courage into these elements and made every possible effort to teach not only hatred, for but also contempt, for the wholesome restraint upon devilry imposed by the treaties. She sought to convert latent, timid and "passive anti-foreignism into active and aggressive antiforeignism, and.no one can say that
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