There is just this difference between Wu Pei-fu and the leaders of the alliance organized to oppose him. Wu Pei-fu believes sincerely that he has fought in the past and} will fight in the future in the interests of the people. He wants to do something for the people and he wants neither great wealth nor great power for himself. His first great weakness, in which are some of the elements of failure and collapse, is that he does not know how to go about either serving the people or winning—their support, except by charging head first against odds with a group of men who charge closely at his heels because of personal faith, attachment and loyalty. His second great weakness, in which are most of the elements of failure and collapse is, that not knowing how to serve the people or win their support, he will not be told, will not realize that he has made mistakes and correct them, but proves himself as timid in departing from the traditional ruts of Chinese politics as he is bold in deviating from the opera bouffe traditions of Chinese warfare.
As a soldier Wu Pei-fu is head and shoulders above any man in uniform in the North. No one who has been associated with. him doubts his sincerity or honesty of purpose. But as a politician he is as far from understanding that you can take a Chinese farmer with an anthropoid forehead, convert him into a Chinese citizen and a supporter in 20 minutes, and that it would pay to do this, as any other Chinese whose faculties have been petrified through memorizing a wheelbarrow load of books and who could not give an accurate paraphrase in simple Mandarin of one sentence out of ten that he carries in his head.
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For nearly a year Wu Pei-fu has been in a position to exercise direct influence over the affairs' of Honan and Hupeh, and an indirect influence over Shensi, Hunan, Chihli_and Shantung. There is peace in all of these provinces at the moment, but in the administration of none of them have there been marked reforms which would indicate to either the native or the outsider that a friend of the people! with almost unlimited military strength within these areas had been directing the administrative machinery. The people have not been admitted to greater share in} the direction of their affairs, their taxes have been no lighter and they have derived no_ greater benefits from them. In Hupeh we have the word of many authorities for it that conditions under Wu Pei-fu's lieutenants are worse than they ever were under Wang Chan-yuan, that there are more unreasonable taxes, more exactions imposed upon the middle class folk, and even Jess personal liberty. Hupeh is the province over which Wu Pei-fu is supposed to exert most.direct influence. He made the Tuchun and he uses the revenues, or whatever is left of them when his subordinates are finished with them, for the maintenance of his armies. Hupeh is conspicuous because in the centre of it is Hankow with its big foreign colony, big industries, big shipping and big educational institutions. It was also the centre for a fairly well defined movement towards self-government when Wu Pei-fu appeared upon the scene last summer. Because Hupeh is conspicuous Wu Pei-fu's failure to live up to his reputation as a friend of the people is conspicuous.
Let us not be unappreciative. Wa Pei-fu has destroyed within the past two years a number of active forces for evil. The scalps of Chang Chin-yao, Tuan Chi-jui and all the Anfuites, Chen Shu-fan, Wang Chanyuan and a number of Hunanese and Szechuanese small fry hang at his belt. He has created opportunities by demolishing evils which a people keenly alive to their country's needs would have used to establish good government, with or without Wu Pei-fu. The people are not keenly alive to their needs, however. They wait for the really big man to tell them what they need and lead them to it. Wa Pei-fu issued a feeble call and get ting a feeble response, such as any man familiar with his countrymen's knowledge of what they want might expect to get, gave them Tuchuns and generals, different in no essential respect from those whom they were used to, and then went back to Loyang to watch his troops parade and issue' an occational threatening telegram.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.