In accordance with what are doubtless the wishes of the British Delegation, we propose to begin consideration of the anti-British trouble in the Liang-kuang by first concentrating attention on the aspect of it which has found expression in the anti-British boycott, this boycott? Ignoring jurely accidental uni ships and in the} fusing to load or
Chinese people in our territory fusing to buy or deal in Britis goods, oF to sell goods to the British. vit admitted that the boycott is an organized patriotic movement which has been sustained by the Chinese people in South China for more than ifthe anti-Brtish boycott is to be settled and not simply suppressed by force and so transformed into an enduring element in Chinese-British relations throughout Chi it is necessary to find out, at least, its direct and immediate cause. In homely phrase, a malady is cured by treating its cause.
The Firing on June 23
'The anti british boycott in its typical form began immediately after the events of June 23, 1926, off the Shameen. And none with conse of causation can possibly' doubt that the boycott was the first} direct and immediate outcome of the Killing and maiming of Chinese stud ents and others on that fateful day. If, therefore, the anti-British boycott is to be terminated by a negotiated settlement, we must first deal with the transaction of June 23, 1926.
Broadly speaking, the material tacts of the case are not in real dispute save one, namely whether the British or the Chinese fired the first shot, But even this point becomes of secondary importance when entire incident is examined from standpoint of juridfeal responsbility. Such an examination leads ug first to a brief review of what ay be called the causal background out of which sprang the tragedy the conception of Serjeant Eversor faction on May 30 a3 a massacre persists in the Chinese Nationalist's mind. And the senso of wrong engendered is all the greater now that the bloodless handling of a far more dangerous crowd at Shanghai on the first anniversary of May 80 proves that Everson's action was wholly unnecessary as an application Jof the doctrine of the preventive massacre, Jo, the prevention of a Digger massacre by the mob. Jwhich Major Hilton Johnson and other British witnesses at the Shang-rai Judicial Inquiry swore would have taken place had Everson not ordered firing into an unarmed crowd of students and others.
Owing to fighting in Canton which enabled the Government to destroy sundry rebel elements and to unity the province, the repercussion of May 20 was not fuy felt here before the aniddle of June, when the real significance and gravity of the oceutsence began to be understood. Poking ad elsewhere there was vendy a realization that an had taken place which wa: reler of acts that create history. As Cw ton is the Nationalist centre in the ¢ entry, it not strange that May 30 should fed from an uncomprcsaie standpoint ard agen to be n decisive express.on of, the struggle between the body of economic and political needs and, {ideas known as Chinese Nationalism, whose chief motive ts the achieve ment of real Chinese independence, and the opposing system of ideas Jand forces which, deriving their sanction from the long series of tre ties dating from the transaction of Nanking in 1842, is known as Foreign Imperialism, ~Canton's Demonstration This interpretation of May 30 would naturally find expression here in the form of patriotic demonstra-tiang and other popular manifesto tions. And it was the driving neces sity to express the Nationalist mind and feeling on a profoundly poignant act of tragedy that Cantor, of June 23.
It {s an historical fact that the powerfully Evorson's order to his men to to kill" the Ohinese students and thors who demonstrateg at Shanghai on May 30, 1925. In China as elsewhere, school boys and girls of today are the rulers and workers of to-morrow, and a nation is necessarily interested in its student class There is also a special reason why' ple are intere: inherent in the pre-transition through which China is passing, this mark and quality of vitality in a nation 4s possessed by the Chinese student class, If China is to live, her' students must continue to voice the new economic political needs of the 'Transition until a new equilibrium established between the Chinese people and the changed environment in which they find themselves after' three-quarters of a century of commercial, diplomatic and social intercourse with foreigners.
The Affair of May 30
This view of the Chinse student! class explains the range and depth of the repercussion of May 30 on the nation. Along the great lino of the. Yangtze-—at Hankow, Kiukiang, Nanking—and in the north, notably, Baking, significant manifestations of national feeling and: a new. consclousness occurred. Even today more than a year after the event, tion, consisted largely and school-children and was entirely unarmed save as to the Whampoa tion who were in ordinary parade attire.
The question as to which fired the first shot is not a capital fa sue in view of the actual circumst ances of the case and the grim results of the shooting. Never in its history had Shameen been so completely and perfectly protected.
rated by its wide canal, sand-bagged, _barb-wired, equipped and garrisoned force, armed to the teeth and supported and covered by the great guns of the foreign warships in the harbour, Shameen was impregnable and absolutely safe even on the incredible assumption that there were! any real Chinese intention to eap-{tare it, 'There was no such intention and thers could have been none, (and the results of the shooting prov. fed it. The British suffered hardly' {any casualties, but 50 dead and more than 100 wounded Chinese demonstrated afresh the meaning of struggle between a fortress and a crowd. All the relevant facts of the case support the view that, yeven if the Shameen firing were done in the first instance in so-called self-defence (which is categorically denied), it was excessive and therefore legally unjustified. 'That *Shameén "was, on 'June 23,: 1925, in' the mood and super to act violently and excess sively. appears. from" the widely Jadvertised: letter' written by: -the then Britist Consul-General on June
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.