The rendition of the British Concession at Tientsin is still being seriously discussed, ' as the telegram which we published yesterday from our Peking correspondent clearly indicated] It will undoubtedly seem to the British commercial communities throughout the East, as it} does to us, that nothing could be more untimely nor more depressing than any modification by agreement of suck rights as!
Men big enough to aspire to such offices are invariably men of widely scattered interests and investments who have influential relatives elsewhere. There are a hundred ways in which! indirect pressure could be brought upon them and unless Ithey put themselves under Chinese official patronage and took: Jorders, no force in a foreign, Concession could give them adequate, protection from persecution. We have had a dozen conspicuous instances of the influence which the Provisional Court is subjected to since it was set up a very short time ago. We have already observed that jail the Chinese members of the, Hankow Council are political appointees who have to take or-Jders from the local authorities.
We know, therefore, that if! the vicinity of Tientsin were i the hands of the "Nationalists' who have behaved so badly throughout the South and the Yangtze Valley and who have; mot made the slightest gesture towards apology or reparation for the hideous Nanking tragedies, half the members of the! [Council in Tientsin would, willy-nilly, be "Nationalist" agents. The President, who enjoys veto power, would be a "Nationalist" appointee, who would see an. infringement of sovereign rights in the foreigner's very presence upon Chinese soil, and the British members of the Council; would find themselves blocked at every turn by tactics that! would be obstructionist when not openly hostile. That such a state of affairs would make it unsafe for thousands of worthy Chinese to live in the Concession and that it would cost them, a: well as the foreigner, millions through depreciation of property values, official interference with legitimate trade and round-about impositions, is already taken for granted, as the exodus of both persons and capital from Tien-is demonstrating.
No one doubts that in any! such Concession many intelligent jand honest Chinese could be found who, if they were let alone, would be an asset to governing body because of their knowledge of their own people} and their influence in the community. The difficulty is that they would not be let alone but, under the influence of any existing Chinese faction, would be forced to league themselves to-Jgether to make a pest of themselves and reduce the efficiency lof the foreign administration by, fty per cent, pushing the cost} lof administration up proportion-jatoly. The majority of the Chinese commercial community in place like Tientsin would doubtless Be only too happy to ico-operate with the foreigner to keep things up to scratch and would take pride in seeing that Tientsin was all the better for Chinese participation in the feeling. Stagnation, ignorance, wretched poverty, dirt and con-Sequent disease certainly do not refine the spirit but brutalize it. Misgovernment, injustice jand heartbreaking' economic conditions, such as prevail and have always prevailed throughout the East, sult in a society that has no use {for altruism, mutual kindness or charity, but is selfish, suspicious and cruel. The Chinese are often accused of lack of public spirit, of having no sense of responsibility to anyone or anything outside the family hive.
these shortcomings in their social relations are conspicuous they are not half so conspicuous as the hard conditions which force a man to be mean, selfish land ruthless to survive, The Chinese who go abroad and prosper in a happier atmo phere display an utterly diffe ent spirit in a generation or so, The first essential to economic conditions that give scope to, spirituality, as Dr. Hu Shih, must have observed, is political But they would|stability.
He cannot preach thave nothing to do with it. Thelimprovement in character or same folk in a purely native|thought into his unhappy fellow community can do nothing what-countrymen, until he and men of lever when a general comes along his type have restored to them with his riff-raft and states his the peace of mind and security wants, or the Political Bureau of body which make the consid-attached to a Red unit moves in eration of spiritual things seem. jand announces that there is to worth while, be an agitation, a demonstration, jo strike, boycott or anti-foreign pogrom. Break down the rigid
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.