Oct, 28.
With reference to the letter} jyublished in our correspondence columns concerning the Good Roads Movement, it is needless to say that every one in all countries favours good, modern, well-kept roads, That is so axiomatic as to be almost trite. One supports naturally the idea of wood roads as one favours clean teeth for schoolboys and an unto-date fire department for " large city. The appeal then of the National Goat Roads Associntion for funds from foreigners for the support of their effort to advertise good roads to the Chinese, would ordinarily win hearty approval and' support were it not that this particular association is a constant source of anti-foreign propaganda, that it ig more than Iively that the funds contributed by foreigners would be spent in agitating against them, and that the leaders of this association have ever been in the forefront of the anti-foreign campaign in China, For such an organiza~ tion to invite subscriptions from foreigners is almost more insulting than ridiculous, for the {niplication is that we have a short memory or an inability to remember or know anything The. Good Roads Movement was started as a committee of the Pan-Pacific Association, with Dr. C. 'T. Wang as chairman and a large number of Chinese and representative foreign merchants on the committee. This com-ruttee, met regularly to consider} ways and means for the spread of the idea of good roads throughout China, Suddenly and' despotically, Dr. C. 'T, Wan; dismissed the foreign members of the committee, reorganized it] into an association, and filled' that association with politicians and students who immediately began to use it for political purposes." One of the few brilliant suggestions made at meetings of this association was that of Mx.
George Hsu Chien, who claims that he ig not a Communist, that a road: should be built round the Settlement, so that the foreigners might be shut in it, This eventually became one of the principal ideas of the association and was used with fiery enthusiasm during the burning days of 1925. Dr. C.'T, Wang, the chairman of the association, has not, of! course, always been with it since its inception he has spent fame years in Peking and elsewhere, but whenever he is out!
polities, whenever he is without official status, he comes back: to the Good Roads Association and revives it, apparently to give! himself something to do. Tt will not be forgotten that Dr. C. T. Wang, as Chairman of the Chi nese Ratepayers Association, at tempted to distress this Settl nent by a political agitation over rates, which, it was suspected in many quarters, was more of an attempt to utilize Settlement disturbances to win a place in Nanking than it was a genuine desire to solve the very complex Shanghai question, That effort having failed, and Dr, Wang having reduced himself from an acting Premier of the Republic of China ts be the Mayor of Chengchow, which we hope he will turn into 4 model city, he again begins to push the National Good Roads Association and to appeal to fortigners for funds. This time the campaign is not entrusted to Chinese, but a foreigner is designated to, manage it with for-ign efficiency and method. This is an interesting suggestion to tions.
Now, this Association makes claim to. having accomplished. much. It points to the fact that Jat one time there were no good roads in China and that now there are many.. Yet the fact reinaing that the Association never built a single road, that it never expended any of the funds collected on road building, and that there is no outward evidence Jof any connection between its existence and the increase of good roads. Curiously enough, most of the additional mileage in good roads is in Manchuria, to which neither Dr. C. T. Wang nor many of the principal members of the Association could go with safety. Some roads have been built in Shansi and by Mershal Feng Vu-hsiang's troops, where National Good Roads Association propagandists might aver been permitted to make! Ispeeches, but, by and large, the yond development has been in territory outside the propaganda belt and the basis of the development has not been a desire to Jdrive the foreigner out of China by building roads around him, but rather the necessity for speedy transportation of troops in the everlasting civil warfare! Jwhich is characteristic of the present period in Chinese history. Dr. C. T. Wang would not be willing to admit that his organization counsels building good roads so that northern troops might more speedily be mobilized against the Nationalists; yet, if he does not admit that, then' he: must confess that he and his organization have had nothing to do with the increase in road mileage, for that increase was Jdue to militarism and not to We have no wish to add to the mounting causes for misunderstanding between the Chinese and the foreigners in China; yet to let this incident, this modern, hundred per cent.' efficient, collection of money among foreign-Jers to finance an anti-foreign or-Jwanization, to pass without comment and protest would be to betray the foreign community of Shanghai. It is a curious fact that just when one begins to forget all the misery of the past two years, all the lies and false-floods, the shameless denunciation of everything foreign by Chinese—particularly by Chine! who owe their elevation in si ciety, their careers, their very hives to foreign assistance—along they come, a smirk on their lips, their tongues in their cheeks, lasking the foreigner to finance them again so that they might have a treasury for their political activities, so that they might, when convenient, have funds on hand to wage another war of vituperation and hatred against jus, The masses of the Chinese Ipeople are generous and friendly; every missionary who has suffer-led in the interior has something kindly to say of the plain people of China, But these politicos, ions and dinners, these professional representatives of the "People," who never selected them for anything, keep this ive with their singly insulting attitude toward the foreigners, In 1925, [they called us knaves, and would have a road built around the Settlement that we might not contaminate the sweet air alongside Hungjao; to-day they call us fools and ask us to pay for their Tue vernacular press states that, owing to the additional construction of roads in the vicinity of Scott Road by the S.M.C., the Commissioner of Foreign Affairs has lodged a protest with the Consular Body. Further, the Mayor of Shanghai (Chinese), it is understood, has ordered. the Chinese police to prevent Municipal aad labourers from carrying their work.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.