May 12.
always assumed by the! world weary that a certain Jamount of hypocrisy and pre. tence must enter into diplomacy: under "any circumstances whatsoever, just as the modern Gil Blas is presumed to write calomel into every prescription of respectable "length and fitting' obscurity. It is hard to tell, however, when the percentage of hocus-poons in a diplomatic prescription will turn the stomach of the beef-eating rank jand file, At this very moment jwe are stricken with the thought that Sir Austen Chamberlain, in latest remarks upon the igtze adjustment, has written rear deal more jalap into the British panacea than any season-led resident of this unfortunate country can possibly swallow. Some of the statements that Sit Austen has most recently made: really insult the "intervals" of fall thoughtful people.
He has discovered, for instance, that the Hankow government ceased to lexist 2 a unity within four days Jof the signing of the Chen-O'Maliey agreement and, since there seems to be a certain Jamount of feeling throughout. China that the "Government" still combining domestic'with which Mr. O'Malley dealt: never did exist, whether before or after the agreement, Sir Austen's dating of its demise seems to us rather arbitrary. His per functory ritual over Moscotv' still-born child will move few persons in China to tears, A little further on in Sir Austen's speech in the House we learn with wide-eyed credulity that the virtuous Chiang Kaiishek, the Galahad among Southern revolutionaries, came very nearly to being embroiled in the Nanking outrages because of a deep and dark conspiracy among the communists to smirch his fair name. We are still further astonished to learn from London. and from the mouth of the Secre-they of State for Foreign Affairs that "in view of the momentous developments due to the discrediting of Communists and their foreign advisers in the eyes of China, the question of punishment for the Nanking outrages has assumed an entirely new aspect. The real offenders, namely Communist agitators, had been punished with a severity and effectiveness of which no foreign Power could have been capable."
It is astonishing how much we learn about our own affairs from these vebgund reports. The impression in the Far East has been that Chiang Kai-shek, moved by a burning ambition to recover his monopoliste grip upon the so-called "Nationalist" movement, executed a certain number of rivals and agents of rivals subsequent to the Nanking scandal, out of no friendship for the foreigner and by no means prejudicing "Nationalism's" primary aim of doing the alien down. We have yet to learn that the one and only responsible person, whom Chiang Kai-shek might have dealt with had he been concerned with the foreigner's "face" or welfare, namely Ch'eng Ch'ien, hi subjected to either' punishment or discipline, Our Chinese friends as they come and go continue to chorus one bit of advice and that is that if the foreigner is to recover even the scraps of his prestige he must occupy Nanking, obliterate the place and, above all things, make sure that Ch'eng Ch'ien's head adorns a conspicuous pole. This is of course savagery, but they are cutting off ears and noses in ultra-modern Hankow and_torturing excess taxes out of the wealthy, so we are not dealing with a people who would be unduly shocked by the display of jo head. The consummation of this bit of revancke is not only expected by the Chinese, but is discussed by them as a fait Jaccompli. They cannot conceive of us following any other programme, as it is hard to appraise their reactions to such remarks jis Sir Austen Chamberlain has made about the "severity and effectiveness" of the Nanking savages.
Dropping all persiflage, we know perfectly well that no ndequate reparation of any sort has yet been made for the atvocities perpetrated by Ch'eng Chiien's Hunanese against the Nanking foreign colony, Chiang Kai-shek's execution of his rivals has nothing whatever to do with us except when, by mere accident, Chiang's personal enemy pens to coincide with a person involved in anti-foreign outrages, To pretend that the Nanking executions are in any degree 4 step in a scheme of reparations for the Nanking affair, is rather more than incidentally misleading. It sounds dangerously like deliberate misrepresentation of the facts for we know not what domestic political purposes.
When the Secretary for For-ign Affairs applauds the restraint shown by the Powers in their failure to exact "sanctions" in the matter of the Nanking Joutrage, attributing this restraint to a delicate concern for
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.