For some time past there have been many references in northern Journals to an organization known as the Patrol Corps, which seems to operate in Peking without check from the civil authorities, the local garrison commanders or the police Lut which, like the Soviet Cheka, responsible to some high inner lo from which it draws secret and unlimited authority. Tt is a [secret police organization, nominally Jattached to the office of the police chief but apparently operating from office and often without of that functionary. The ostensible purpose of the Corps spy out and checkmate Com-t activity, but according to Peking gossip, the thoroughly wick. Jed and dangerous Communists have called into being an opposition force that is fully as wicked and troublesome as they are. Many arrests are said to have been made which irirate the police officials and which have prompted General Chen Hsin-ya to succumb to an official illness Jas a protest against them. The poople say that respectable persons are being arrested.and charged with Communist affiliations to extort dribble through the more reliable Jchannels of official gossip. This is particularly true of the release of Mme. Borodin and the three diplomatic couriers who were arrested with her at Pukou and who have now been set at liberty by Chang Tso-lin's court on the ground that there is insufficient evidence of Communist conspiracy against them. The judge announced that the amnesty, declared when Chang Tso-Yin assumed the office of Generalissimo, applied to all political prisoners who had not been proved to be jective Communist agents and that there had been no such proof brought against Mme. Borodin and liber three associates. Now we all know perfectly well that this is not ithe reason that they were released. Had they been 'Chinese, no great effort would have been' made to prove them guilty of conspiracy against the Peking regime. The assumption of guilt would © have [been sufficient to condemn them, as it was in the ease of Li Ta-chao and his colleague who were so summarily strangled. Again, had there been insufficient evidence, we all know that the Fengtien intelligence Jservice would have had no difficulty jin producing real proof that Mme. Borodin at least has indulged in Communist propaganda for several years. Several foreign intelligence services can prove that she—was the leading organizer of Communist bodies among Chinese women who twere used as spies and agitators jand we even remember, as many of Jour readers probably do also, seeing photographs of Mme. Borodin [platforms haranguing gatherings. The assumption in all minds must therefore be that expediency dictate fed her release and the release of the couriers, but what the unofficial reasons for this act of grace were, jwe have yet to learn, for neither Reuter's nor our own correspondent, in Peking has kept us informed upon the progress of the trial or the official dismissal of the case. Undoubtedly foreign opinion in Peing was taken into account and: it }was probably thought that a grace-fol and lenient gesture in case, in which a woman and sever involved, 00d impression In this the Peking] undoubtedly right, dure like the strang—chao would certainly. have brought about a revulsion of feeling against Peking even among, the bitterest enemies of Bolshevism. That other and more important con-[siderations were behind Mme. Boro-Jdin's release is, however, to be taken for granted and we are waitting with no little interest for their inevitable revelation, because they may very possibly have some be: ting upon the future policy a tactics of the Soviet in this country.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.