May 16.
From the flood of letters about Tsinan which continue to pour in upon us we print three today. Of these three, we would observe, two are from the Chinese point of view. We wonder whether Chinese papers would do as much. The difference between us and our Chinese critics is that, quite obviously, few of them have ever even thought of more than one side of the qu tion. Thus Miss Li of Nanking attacks us for believing that Japan never had any intention of interfering in the war between North and South. Surely the uproar which has been raised over the clash at Tsinan and the vilification that Japan has since been subjected to is sufficient ground for this assumption, not to mention her own experiences of the boycott in past years and all the insult and injury heaped upon Great Britain since 1925. No nation has the slightest desire to get entangled in China's civil wars, much the reverse, They have too many more important preoccupations elsewhere.
We are accused of fi sympathize with China, charge is quite untrue. face of it, it seems very hard that she cannot fight out her civil wars without getting involved with a third party, We may think there are cheaper and easier ways of unifying the country than by warfare; but, if the Chinese think otherwise. that is their affair. This brings us to what is really the root of the Chinese case, as clearly put by "F.D.Z." to-day. Cun the Japanese say that it was just to send troops to Tsinan, he asks; and he asserts that "there every reason to believe the Chi nese troops are well disciplined. With the latter statement must regretfully but empha ally differ. Foreign mission buildings in Nanking to-day are occupied by soldiers whom the Nationalist Government itself cannot evict. (All the facts, resting on unimpeachable evidence, too long to repeat here, were set out in our leader "Promise and Performance" of April 26.) When the Nationalist troops reached Yenchow on their northward march a few weeks jaga, they promptly occupied the Jocal mission buildings in spite of the solemn promises to respect foreign property given by their Commander-in-Chief. The filthy and scandalous condition of the Mahan School at Yangchow when at last evacuated on the 7th ultimo, not by common soldiers but by a Nationalist Officers Training Corps, is fresh in every memory.—Wherever Nationalist troops have marched in the past two years, there has been the same tale of foreign property commandeered and looted, not mere vague report, but corroborated up to the hilt." What is the orly alternative, but that either the Southern troops are undisciplined, or that they are deliberately set on by their leaders to outrage foreign houses? Considering all circumstances Japan was not only justified in sending troops to protect her people and property in Shantung, but would have gravely neglected her duty if she had not.
Three. further points in the case for Japan may be mentioned. It is not disputed that she withdrew her guards and removed her barricades at Tsinan at Chiang Kai-shek's request: that surely is not the act of an intentional aggressor, She peremptorily warned off Peking when it wished to take advantage of the confusion resulting from the clash of May 8 to launch an attack on the South: that, again, is not the act of one who seeks to intervene on behalf of the North. Finally, as soon as Tsinan had been cleared of Southern troops, she gave over the control of the city to the local Chinese Chamber of Commerce: and that is not the act of one who desires a pretext for seizing Chinese We are not specially interested in defending the Japanese, They did nothing to help us in our recent difficulties; indeed, they seemed to seize every opportunity of profiting by them. But right is right and wrong is wrong and the hysteria of the Chinese outcry makes one's gorge rise, We said a few ays ago, and we hold to it, that we thought Chiang Kai-shek had done all he could possibly do, Credit is due to him, as it is to the Nanking Government's efforts and those of the Shanghai Garrison Commander, to re-ress agitation and prevent dis order. And Mr. T. V. Soong's plea for clear thinking and re= solute facing of facts was a model to everyone. One regrets that it has not been followed by others. The day will come, we hope, when the authors of the telegram from Chinese women to the women of the world will blush to think of their handiwork, They injure the Nation alist case more than they can gine. And on any impo review of all the circumstances, the Nationalists enter court already heavily handicapped.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.