Many things have occurred in the last three years to give the impres-slon that the Chinese people are bent upon national suicide and the Troopships have been steadily arriving day after day and the most conservative estimates put the number of Japanese troops now in Shantung at 18,000. Others put it at. 80,000. Be' the number what it may, it is certain that no Chinese or combination of armies is able to dislodge these Japanese forees. They are here and unless the Chinese can awake to the necesity of meeting their demands they may as well kiss Shantung good-by for once and all.
Every patriotic Chinese ought to realize now that the fate of the anti-Northern expedition is now unimportant, for the Nanking government is to all practical purposes cut off from any participation in the benefits of a Northern with-that is very popular among the younger Chinese—All Right. Just let the Japanese have Tsinan and See what they will: do with it. will overcome them with passive resistance." But they forget that to be effective passive resistance requires a higher degree of courage and national patriotism than actual war, The Japanese line from, Tsingtao to Tsinan actually touches several millions of people. These copie have been oppr tyrants as never before there hlswrys The aponete tae at once begun to throw off the burden of extra taxation and. would be more than useless to forbid their acceptance of such liberation, nothing gives him as much pain as parting with a dollar, nor is any joy quite 80 keew as the saving'of one, Does any one expect the Chinese of this province to resist seriously any regime that gives them relief from the burdens of the past few years? drawal. Tt does' not matter much when Chang Tso-tin vacates Peking, or whether Feng or Yen is first to arrive there. No one expects Yen to be able to hold down the job alone and Feng Vu-hsiang is just another Northern militarist. He has had his try at Peking and shown his limitations and. weaknesses and no matter how hard he tries he certainly cannot rise above the old feuds that invariably have generated a new crop of wars.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.