To the Editor of the "Nonru-Cuiwa Dairy News"
Sin—At this Into hour, more than a year after the event, the Canton authorities are athing for an "inguiry" into the Shameen inident of June 23, 1925.
T have been living in a district where the coolies had a habit of stopping me in the road, and asking for payment on account of some alleged service for me two or three months before. This annoyance ceased when I ict it be known that! all work would be paid for at the time; and no claims, afterwards, could be entertained!
At an inland port, where I living, a dozen "years ago, there was a good deal of trouble follow ing a collision between a motor boat and a sampan. The sampan capsized; and, it was stated, but without "any proof, that "several people had been drowned." The local magistrate, ecenting a squeeze, arrested the two pilots on the motor and put them in prison for murder. Pilots being then scarce, he expected a heavy bribe from the Chinese Motor Boat Ca.
In spite of much talk, none could prove that anyone had been drowned. The two pilots, however, were threatened with execution and kept in prison.
'A dead body, cast up on the river bank, was claimed as a victim of the incident. The British "Consul and the Customs' medical officer Went to make en examination. They found a bullet wound in the head of the corpse; and other evidences that the man must have been killed before being thrown into the water. The doctor sent in a report to that effect. No notice was taken of this by the official Several weeks later, he asked the doctor to attend an inquest on the corpse. A corpse was produced, on the same spot, which might," or might not, have been the same as the first one. Anyway, it was in such a condition that nothing could bbe proved or disproved from it.
When the doctor persisted in' his statement that the body he had seen before was not that of a man dead from drowning, the magistrate reluctantly released the two pilots. At the same time he declared that the English doctor had been bribed by the Motor Boat Ca. to lic!
When the Canton authorities ask for an inquiry into the Shameen affair, 13. months too late, we, who are familiar with China, are not surprised!
Tt was known, at the time, that it was an artificial incident, deiberately planned to make for trouble. The Russian party feared that the Shanghai affair, of May 80, was too far away to stir the people of Canton. Some other "martyrs" would heave to be created.
They did not anticipate the warm reception they received from the Shameen defenders; or they would have sought some other "incident"
With the aid of the best Bolshevik minds, from Moscow, those troublers of Canton are now making out "a for sheer effrontery tertian of fact would be hard to beat anywhere.
The pity is that we are entangled in this endless mesh of words, which cannot lead to a righteous settlement. And all because an indemnity for damages was not demanded at the time, and the punish. ment insisted upon of the assassins who fired the first shots.
Tam, ete, 'Sezine Is' Bauevinc.
Hongkong, July 27, 1926,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.