Mar. 24.
THE case against any tampering in any way whatsoever, with foreign extraterritorial safeguards in China has been put by Mr. Rodney Gilbert with all his rare force and vividness of express sion. He writes with wide personal experience of the things he describes. He has seen China as she is, not from the obscured and rose-pink viewpoint of a coastal treaty port, but with the realities gained by many a long tramp in the remotest parts of the country. And the verdict of his observations, which will also that of all who have first hand knowledge of China today is that there can be no thought of surrendering extraterritoriality nor of bartering bits of it for imaginary advantages, so long as Peking and even some of the provincial rulers are powerless beyond their own walls, Hardly even there, one might add, re membering how, but a week or two ago, Mr. Quo Tai-chi, the Southern agent, was very nearly nabbed by Chang Tso-lin's secret police, functioning in Peking.
And this brings us to one important point, additional to Mr. Gilbert's arguments. He tells us that it is chiefly the returned students who champion the cause of abolition of extraterritoriality in China. And the older officials do lip service. But ask these older men, especially those who eat the fearful fruits of office, or even the younger men, Mr. Quo Tai-chi for instance, whether in their heart of hearts they wish to see the foreign concessions of Tientsin disappear, as surely they would if extraterritoriality went. Those concessions and the railway leading to them are veritable cities of refuge for Chinese officials momentarily under a cloud. And this fact needs specially to be pressed upon the notice of Ministers and State Departments in the West, who are prone to form the most misleading ideas about China from contact with the charming gentlemen whom she astutely sends to represent her abroad. Once back in China, they and other foreign-trained Chinese have but two alternatives: to live in the foreign concessions, or to jettison all their foreign conceptions, revert to the old standards and keep their mouths shut. In political, official China there is no place for the fine theories that attract so much attention in London and Paris.
There is a further point, suggested by Mr. Gilbert's allusion to the foreigners who believe that they might do bigger and better business if permitted to reside in the interior of China under Chinese jurisdiction. Now there can be no doubt that this most dangerous doctrine is beginning to appeal to large syndicates whose business lies in China though their directors do not. The origin of this belief is that presently the Germans will be coming back to China, that they will have no extraterritorial rights and that we must accordingly surrender ours in order to compete with them. The answer is that while it would be easy enough to find adventurous young men eager to start off into China with a bale of goods in one hand and a revolver in the other and no extraterritorial rights, the end of that sort of business is simply war. The trade of a few big organizations might gain, but that of the average merchant would die. Moreover, it is extremely unlikely that the Germans will be content to return without extraterritorial rights. They are skilful in some of the ways that ingratiate them with Chinese, but we should be surprised if they submitted to holding the inferior position compared with other foreigners, in which the want of extraterritorial jurisdiction would place them—as Mr. Gilbert says, the position of Outer Bar-~ parians, ranking with Tibetans, Mongols and fish-skin Tartars.
We regret to have to raise this question of extraterritorial rights, because it is one on which the Chinese necessarily feel keenly. But faith in China's future is one thing, a clear perception of her present condition another and it is necessary to speak quite plainly to the Chinese returned student who clamour for the ending of foreign jurisdiction in this country, as to those foreigners who, either for interested motives priding themselves on taking wide views, are prepared at.any time to give away what is not theirs and what they have not learnt by personal experience to value. It is specially important that the Governments in the West should be left no room for misapprehension as to China's utter unfitness to be trusted with judicial power over foreigners, cause of the international confer-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.