July 6.
THE foreign community does not often find itself in wholehearted agreement with Dr. Sun Yat-sen. But we think that it will cordially endorse his plea.that the Powers will withdraw recognition from Peking. It is to be admitted that Dr. Sun is only repeating in more vigorous terms what he and his party have been saying any time these past two or three years, Hitherto the plea has fallen on deaf ears, partly because the Powers were not disposed to take so drastic a step, partly from a suspicion that to get rid of Peking would merely be to make way for the Kuomintang. And that suspicion still clings in many minds. The respect that is felt for Dr. Sun Yat-sen personally does not extend to some of his entourage and it is open to question whether there may not be potential militarists and king-makers in the South as obnoxious as are to be found in the North. But the question of withdrawing recognition from the North is a perfectly clear issue, quite independent of what is likely to follow it. So long as President Li Yuan-hung sat in Peking, his government had a claim to legality. He was brought back in the summer of 1922, if not with Dr. Sun's approval at any rate with that of a fair number of the country's leaders, and the old constitutional Parliament followed him.
It was admittedly a stop-gap arrangement, made for a time of crisis, to continue only until the Constitution was completed; but its legality appeared fairly proof. But now President Li has been driven out by the shadiest of manceuvres; Parliament is a mockery; and the offices of the Cabinet are divided up among a triumvirate of creatures who have no claim to ad-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.