Contrary to current: reports there was actually more gloom in Tientsin party circles yesterday afternoon than there has been since President Li left for Tientsin. Tsao Kun's circular telegram encouraging the M.P-'s to complete th constitution and pledging himself to abide by it when completed, was nothing more or less than a confession of defeat. It was not as complete a confession at that as the original draft of the wire, prepared for him by his wiser advisers, who are fighting the Tientsin leaders within the ranks of the Chihli party. They had prepared for him renunciation of his Presidential ambitions, but this- the Tientsin group fought with all the strength that is left to them. The tete-gram as issued does pledge Tsao Kun to see go it that his more unscrupulous followers do not try to railroad "an election. through until the constitution is completed and pledges him not to accept office unless he is constitutionally elected. The Tientsin leaders know only too well that Parliament will never elect Tsao Kun in anything like legal fashion and. that their only hope of getting Tsao in here lies in holding an election with a minority attendance or in bringing Tsao in as dictator. His telegram taboos both these methods and puts the Tientsin Olique in a really desperate position. Tsao Kun's next step, in line with his preseat telegram, might conceivably be a manifesto condemning his overzealous followers for wrecking the Government and driving Parliament out of the Capital.
All this was duly appreciated in Peking yesterday afternoon and the most sensational reports of the desperate temper of the Tientsin leaders were being circulated in highly authoritative circles. One well informed official said that the Tientsin clique had jumped to the conclusion that the only way out of this mess was to follow the tactics of the palace eunuchs and start a conflagration big enough to erase the memory of their crimes from the public mind. It sounds very sensational, but this informant said yesterday quite seriously and soberly thab the Tientsin leaders were going to make every effort 10 precipitate a fight between Wu Pei-fu and Chang Tso-lin and, at. the same time, were going to force Chi Hsieh-yuan, Governor of Kiangsu, to attack Lu Yung-hsiang in Chekiang. While everyone knows that-the trains were' laid for these explosions in the early spring and all preparations made on all sides, it seems almost inconceivable that they should come now. Certainly the Chihli Part; could not provoke trouble with much hope of coming out victorious at this juncture; and if these wars do come at this time, the whole country must appreciate that they have been deliberately fomented by the Tientsin leaders in the hope that their tracks will be obliterated in the -débris and wreckage of a national collapse.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.