There is now no single province or territory in China where undiluted Chinese sovereignty does not spell the resignation of the residents, of whatever breed, to unchecked official: rapacity, unchecked banditry, -unchecked impositions and depredations om the part of the soldiery, to the repression of trade and industry and to unlimited financial muddling, leading to local as well as national bankruptcy. When a Chinese rises up in the new spirit of rabid chauvinism and demands that any given territory or concession, now enjoying peace and prosperity under a foreign administration of any sort, be restored to undiluted Chinese sovereignty, he is asking for nothing less than the resignation of that territory and its people " to the same unrestricted misrule, confusion and impoverishment which Chinese officialdom has inflicted upon all the rest of China.
This ig not' patriotism. It is simply ranting nationalism which will never get China anywhere. For some years the writer has been: condoning student follies of one sort or another, using the argiment that China was badly in need of public opinion as a force in polities, and that in so far as student agitations were an evidence of the growth and organization of public opinion they should not be too drastically restrained. The argument was that the fervid pursuit of a wrong idea was a more hopeful symptom than the absence of all ideas) The hope was that when public opinion had developed itself upon foreign and international issues, it would constitute a weapon which could be turned against Chinese officialdom and constitute that effective check which has been lacking ever since the Emperor was removed.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.