Several times during the past spring and summer we and [various contemporaries have had reason to foresee the inevitable collapse of the Hankow Govern. ment. Some of us were certain Jcnough to fix dates and others were not; but as Hankow Jdragged on towards extinction as "the Sovereign Government of China", and as both Borodin and Eugene Chen lapsed into a state} which for them might be described as silence, British Labour found occasion to grow ribald over the false prophesies of the capitalists, the. Imperialists, and {their journalistic agents. About, the present situation in Hankow there is nothing that could be found funny. by the most chronic joker except the fact that the (Government of those ribald deys, plus the Russian who helped to) enliven the joke, are entirely minus quantities. We rereember hearing verbally a day or.s0 ago that the last stray fragment! Jof what was the regime which Great Britain coneiliated—a Jgentleman who uses foreign initials but is not otherwise Jdistinguished—had left the port, declaring it an empty shell.
'We do hope that our friends lof the Labour Party are being' well informed of the state of things now in the town which Eugene Chen advertised so liberally. The British Govern ment probably is not advertising it, It would be such a devastate ing commentary upon the fruits} Sir Austen Chamberlain's}
[Christmas declaration and upon Mr. O'Malley's subsequent agrecment with Borodin's puppets. Labour will not flaunt existing facts before the British in-Jdustrial proletariat either, for it would entail a horrible loss of face. We fear that not even the foreign community in Hankow is inclined to broadcast existing conditions in view of Sir Austen, "initiative." It should, neverthe-ess, be known throughout the world that, with cartloads of worthless paper on the local] market and the community! Jdvained so dry of ready silver that no petty, subordinate official Jwould live in it—patriotism notwithstanding—Hankow is now discounting its own notes 80} pert cent., actually offering.to pay at the banks of issue 20} cents on the dollar. Here is not only a forfeiture of all suggest-jon of credit, but an abandon lof all consideration for "face, ill in other words, of sense of common decency.
Governments have gone on the rocks before this in China and have virtually pronounced themselves insolvent, but we cannot remember when any official bank; has ever had the effrontery in ithe past to come into the open market and offer to buy back its own notes at 20 cents on the dollar, The experience Hankow banking, added to the [stressful season of extortion this community throughout the spring and summer would make jit appear that the financial policy of Nationalism is one of progressive exhaustion. We hear from Canton stories of General]
Li Chi-hsin's tactics which lead jus to believe that a second Hankow is there in the making.
Communism may be denounced, but the capital levy is a Russian Jesson—still in its infancy in the north—which the South cannot unlearn, The happy thought that a government of the people, the people, and for the people jean yo into a merchant's shop and sean the books, and then. take ten, twenty or fifty per cent., idea that would never have been conceived formerly in China but which—with the help of Mos-Jcow—has been introduced to stay Jand will never be forgotten nor Jabandoned. That the people are the source of all authority is
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.