Jan. 23.
THERE is nothing so difficult to combat as a half truth. Of this valuable fact Mr. Chu Chao-hsin, the Chinese Charge a'Aifaires in London, is evidently well aware. When, for instance, he told the League of Nations that the Chinese Government had appointed commissioners to investigate opium-growing in China, he must have known that the appointment, though sounding pretty, meant absolutely nothing and that provincial military leaders would go on compelling farmers to grow opium in order to pay a tax on it wherever it suited them to do so. Similarly Mr. Chu's speech at the farewell banquet to Sir Ronald Macleay, given by various Anglo-Chinese societies in London, was framed in the same twilight atmosphere of suggestion false and suppression veri, the grossly misleading nature of which it is very difficult to bring home to the far-away British public who have no first hand knowledge, and little enough of any kind, of China as she is. We dislike accusing Mr. Chu of inaccuracies, to use no harsher word. He is by common report a very charming and popular gentleman. China chooses her Ministers carefully and the unfailing courtesy and pleasant manner for which her officials are justly famed enables her to present an excellent appearance abroad. But the times are too critical to allow any question of personal regard to check the exception that we must take to Mr. Chu's statements.
The passage in his speech proposing Sir Ronald Macleay's health that we object to is as fol-
We Chinese particularly want peace, and if we do not. always impress the outside observer with the fact because of our internal differences of opinion, I do not want either you or Sir Ronald to imagine that we have so much changed our nature that we have, as a people, joined the ranks of the militarists. Heaven forbid! I can assure' Sir Ronald that, on his arrival, he will find that China is still possessed of a most peaceful atmosphere, and the people inspired with the most friendly manners, just as he found them before.
Now this description of China is at the same time true and glaringly untrue. We agree that the Chinese want peace: and yet it ootid be proved from their history that there is no nation in the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.