This isn't a spirit which ant Bolshevist propaganda will lay because ig isn't Red and never was. It isn't even the communist spirit, because communism in both theory and practice, however far apart they be, implies order and discipline; but it is the frantic spirit of anarchy which can only be exercised from an Oriental individual or an Oriental people by the drastic costs Moscow for the furtherance of the main purpose of Russian endeavour in the Orient, and we should be very short-sighted indeed if we persuaded ourselves that the Fengtien-Chili victory in the North or the so-called revolt of the Cantonese nationalists against the com-manists in Canton implied the total failure of the Red undertaking in China, What has failed in China is rather a deviation from the main purpose, working in contradiction to it, than the main purpose itself. While working to promote ruin through anarchy, the Russians discovered how easy it was to buy a following and, having collected 9 large coterie of mercenary adherents in Peking and Canton, not to mention other centres, they were tempted to experiment in organized constructive effort, to create dis ciplined forees through whom they could promote more effectively the: ruin of the country's trade and her "capitalistic" institutions, That this should fail was inevitable, The spirit which she had striven to lo? Jose and had patronized turned on the conjuror. Canton turned anti-Red for the sole reason that the Reds were interfering with the liberties" of Canton's officialdom. They tried to introduce order and discipline in the communist fashion and, in doing so, came into direct eonflict_ with their own pampered spirit of anarchy. They built up the most efficient native military force that Kuangtung has had in the province's history and used it to dragoon the population.
Canton's Dislike of Disci While communism scorned to mean unrestrained licence, the Can. tonese in power wore for it; but tually began to look like cipline as seen through a Red veil, it was tyranny and they turned on it. It is a good joke on the Russians, but nothing mor. Those who see in the turn of events in Kuangtung a justification of the do-nothing policy have no idea of what has happened. To. the Cantonese it means that the Russians have been" sed as tools t0 the undoing of the British in South China and thay when the Russians themselves seemed to be getting too firm a grip on the. situation, the Cantonese boldly and cleverly rewarded them by ejecting them. Tt means another loss of prestige for the alien, an accretion of assurane> for the cocksure "nationalist" and the absolutely certain. collapse such order and discipline as the Russians were instilling before their own spirit of anarchy turned foreign, less aggressive in what is tapen them. If Canton happens, in the course of time, to be less ant foreign, less aggressive in what is called nationatiem in its relations Srith the outside world, it_will be Because the order which the Rus-Slane were establishing. has broken down and. because confusion and Gieorganisation, interval turmoil and consequent misery, rob the admini tration of some of its conceit and assurance. The anti-Red reaction no means implies 2. pro-foreign turn, nor even. & fairer and saner attitude towards foreign diplomatic and trade relations. If the Russians were in a position to resent the ejection of their agents, the Cantonese nationalists would of course hasten to curry favour with the:
British, the Japanese, the French and the Americans, for it is the Chinese age-old policy to enlist the services of formerly swindled and rejected friends "to fight their battles for them against recently swindled and rejected allies. But in this instance the Russians are remote and impotent; and the cease with which they were unseated and ejected will only inspire in the Cantonese a deeper conviction of their own overwhelming superiority and render them less amenable to
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.