July 4.
Mr. Birch Crisp's speech at the meeting of the British Bank for Foreign Trade, as reported in another column, is equally amusing and distressing. Amusing in its sublime disregard for the facts of China' as she is; distressing for the infinite harm that such speeches can do in blunting public perception to those facts and creating a wrong impression of their causes. According to Mr. Birch Crisp. China's troubles arise principally if not entirely from ''the strangle-hold'' exercised by the Consortium, which prevents her from dealing in the markets of the world. Well, Mr. Crisp's own loans, past and prospective, prove that this is not quite an accurate statement of the case on the one side. As for the other—the implication that the Chinese Government, whatever those words may mean, would be perfectly all right if only it could get money—the Vickers and Marconi loans, in which Mr. Crisp appears to be personally interested, show what happens to those who lend to China not wisely but too well. His statement that ''they had been taking steps to invite the Chinese Parliament first to sanction this contract, but there had been many delays and many ups and downs and it was impossible to say what might happen," is decidedly funny, when one recalls that the members of China's Parliament cannot be persuaded to form a quorum even to deal with subjects that might be supposed to interest them, let alone the payment of foreign bondholders.
These comments are not inspired by any partisanship or preference for the Consortium as opposed to Mr. Birch Crisp. He is not, it must be said, quite fair to the Consortium. Tha€ organization (we are speaking of the new one) was formed shortly after the war, at a time when the orgy of borrowing indulged in by the Anfu Government had thrown up in glaring relief the disastrousness of uncontrolled loans, in order to bind its component members not to lend money to Peking for political purposes and without proper security and supervision of the spending of the money. This project had the fullest possible approval of the United States Government, which, as will be remembered, had previously objected strongly to anything savouring of a check on China's financial liberties, and had, in the beginning of President: Wilson's regime, insisted on the American banks withdrawing from the earlier international organization into which, under President Taft, it had insisted on their being admitted. Washington's traditional professions of friendship for China should be sufficient guarantee that it would not have approved of the Consortium, if it were what Mr. Birch Crisp makes out. If China had a Government like other countries, there could be no reason why she should not borrow where and how she pleased. But as China is, nobody, outside her own people, who may be presumed to know what they are doing, can lend any money to apy body of mandarins calling themselves a Government, without committing an act unfriendly to the Chinese people and deserving all possible censure and opposition.
For this, among other reasons, the statement issued by the Consortium after the meeting in Paris and telegraphed to us yesterday, must excite adverse criticism. We read in it that while there can be no question of an administrative loan until a stable Government appears, industrial, including railway loans, may be contemplated differently. Provided adequate security can be obtained there
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.