Wu Pei-fu ought by now to be China's greatest living authority on official treachery. Many war lords have been betrayed into temporary defeat and eclipse, but no single one has descended from such high estate to such pitifully low degree as Wu Pei-fu, and very fow have been less deserving of so hard a fate. Thr years ago Wu Pei-fu, still under ed, was assembling ' an enormous army under his single command and seemed within a few strokes of reuniting China by force of arms, Feng Vu-hsiang betrayed him, and ho went into temporary retreat at Yochow and emerged 18 months ago, as a returning Napoleon, to assemble another good sized force, to assume control of half a dozen provinees, and to ally himself with Fengtien against Feng Vu-hsiang whom he helped to defeat. Eleven' months ago he was betrayed and gold at Hankow and his realm dwindled to Honan and a few districts in adjacent provinces. Then he was betrayed again by the ever-faithless and useless Chin Yun-no, then again and again by other subordinates, until he was forced to retire into the innceossible districts} of Sungshan and Nanyang to reshape what army was left to him. Three months ago he still had 60,000
Tine, ago to have nothing left but the 10,000! fighters under Vu) and to have made up longer safe that have been an! "fave been impregnable base for guerilla fighters for 8,000 years and that he would have to strike southwest through Hupeh and join Yang Se And now the report comes in that hho has arrived at Wanhsien without men or money, joining the _upper river outlaw without men or mone With all his faults Wu Pei-fu still has, even among his political enemies, more genuine admirers than any Chinese military leader. He has never given either Chine: or foreigners the slightest reason to doubt his courage or his honesty. He will therefore enjoy much unsolicited sympathy in his present adversity, but we cannot help feeling that his reported association with Yang Sen is not going to be marked up to his credit in the mind of the average foreigner. The Chi-_ nese are not so critical of evil associations as we are. If "A," an honest man of high principles, and "B," 9 rogue with the blackest reputation, both happen to be enemies of HE", though for very different reasons, "A" seems to forfeit _no standing in the Chinese political] world if he accepts "BY as an ally in his war upon "C", even though hho must know that "B's" tactics and is eventual abuse of their joint! victory are going to be thoroughly disgraceful. Marshal Wu's Chinese friends will therefore be somewhat ised to know that his foreign friends probably: regret fully mach his flight to Yang Sen's camp ax they do his political collapse, and would much rather have. seen' him emerge from the Nanyang mountains with a handful of men and perish in an attempt to reproduce his spectacular achievements of earlier days.
The September Tariffs On Thursday Last we published the proposed schedule of (aris on luxuries, divided into classes "A, ""B," and "0," which the "National-tst financiers announce that they will impose upon imports on and! after September 1. Those who read through the list will remember that the maximum surtax is 874 per cent, which with the conventional duty' would make a total of 628 per cent, on such articles as wines and liquors, cigars and cigarettes. Since the publication of this schedule we have tried to it expressions of opinion upon it from competent, business men, but have found it deception with malice aforethought. impossible to prompt a discussion jupon the merits of the schedule from an economic point of view. No one can see why this should be of more than academic interest, since the schedule is too incomplete to be regarded as more than a skeleton, also because very few persons believe now that the "Ni tionalists" will be here in September to attempt to collect it, and finally because the imposition of such arbitrary increases in the tariffs would be such -a flagrant] violation of all treaties and understandings that no one can imagine! that the commercial Powers will tolerate it here or in any other port. Tt is true that the present surtaxes are in violation of treaty and are paid and collected under rotest, but for this there is some slight extenuati since they were agreed to at Washington in principle and were all but contracted for last year, in Peking.
The present schedule, however, goes far beyond anything! that was mooted at Peking amounts to an assumption of the right on Nanking's part to denounce treaties without negotiation, which granted in principle could be at once applied to extraterritoriality, the tenure of all Concessions and Settlements and any other privilege granted to foreigners from 1842 down to the, present. All neg tions of any sort at any time would henceforth be superfluous and futile because the Powers would have granted, by permitting the imposition of arbitrary tariffs in violation of treaty, Chin right to break her written pledges at her own discretion, while the Powers would doubtless' be expected to abide by their part of a bargain. Apart from all this, the one standing and irrefutable argument against any increase in revenues which can be appropriated by any local administration that mo one of the several unrecognized Governments is fit to receive and spend them on behalf of the Chinese people. In the ca of the Nanking "Nationalists" we Know that something, over 80 per cent, of the receipts from the ex-{ortionate taxation and forced loan proceeds from this territory has an|Dribery of enemies and anti-foreign squandered civil war, Tt would take a very]
argument to convince ahd dings and could register secret votes, they would be endorsed. All fof us and ninety-nine out of a hundred Chinese, we are sure, would rather see the actual coin havled out into deep water and thrown to the fishes and, that being the ease, we must feel much more intensely opposed to any attempt to bleed commerce from a new artery. for! purely destructive purposes. 'These are the reasons why no one takes the trouble to know and no one ares whether the prospective schedule is scientifically drafted or whether it is just a hit-or-miss catalogue of imports to be biteatily' penalized. 5
The Rates in Chinese 'The gentleman whose letter in our' correspondence columns is and who raises the ion of the ambiguity Chinese term commonly used for the rates in local publications, is quite right in saying that the Chinese phrase means nothing more than police tax. It might be similarly that the Chinese term for the 1 Council, which is in commonest use even officially, conveys no adequate impression of what that Council actually is, for it means no more than "Labour Office." This term presumably dates back to some very remote period in the history of wut when the administra-def a dust cart and a handful of coolies armed with brooms Jor shovels. To a Chinese from another community, accustomed to the more elaborate modern term-sinology applied to taxes and jinunieipal offices, these very old and lindequate expressions would probably} Jconvey nothing but misunderstandings. The rates would be taxes for the support of the and the Municipal Council would be interpreted to be a board of works. On the other hand there can be no possible, misunderstanding of these ter by any Chinese who has been resident of the concession for more than a few months and any attempt
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.