Major-General Duncan Presides at Executive Luncheon to Dr. David Yui: Educating the People, arranged the Iuneheon on April 27, When the VACA, Executive the Hotel Rassell in honour of Dr, David T. Yui, the national secretary of the YM.CA. in China, they gave the other distinguished guests an opportunity of listening Yo a speech by a man who is naturally a fine orator.
Tt was not the eloquence of Dr. Yes that most impressed his audience, however, but the breadth of his views, and the fact that as sec~ retary of the Chinese Y.M.C.A., chairman of the National Christian Council of China, and the man who had been sent.'ns China's chief delegate to the Washington Conference, he could speak with such authority of the trend of opinion in China, Major General Sir John Duncan, commander of the Shanghai Defence Force in 1927, who presided, welcomed the opportunity to thank Dr. Yui and his Chinese friends publicly for the great kindness and hospitality he had received from them. He had seen the work of the Chinese Y.M.C.A. at close quarters, and had been tremendous-impressed by its vastness and importance, China was goings through a period of great transition socially and morally, and probably there was no other institution which now influenced it so profoundly a: the Y.M.C.A., reports the "Manchester Guardian."
"I am a Scot," said General Duncan, "and in Scotland we attach great importance to education. I found that the same thing existed in China. Throughout the centuries the student has always been most highly respected and education regarded as of much more importance than it is in this country. I was interested to see that the Chinese 'Y.M.CA. was making Christian and social education the most important basis of its work. Tam sure that in this respect it will enormously influence China's future.
"Another great benefit it has conferred is in bringing the foreigners there into contact with the Chinese. when T first the Chinese; we lived side by side Wut, in watertight compartments. Under the direction of Dr. Yul.
Chinese and foreigners together carry on a work for the good not only of Christianity, but for the vast number of the inhabitants of China."
Then the General thanked the Y.M.CA. for what it had done for the troops in China, Tt was very soldiers, he said, largely due to the centres set up the Y.M.C.A. that the young soldiers wore protected to a great tent_ayainst those temptations. The fact that the discipline of the troops was so good T attribute largely," he said, "'to the Y.M.C.A. centres and their work."
The National Movement Dr. Yui, replying, said that as a matter of principle the Chinese people were opposed to any foreign troops being sent to China for any purpose, but he was expressing the ion of his friends, as well as own, when he said that the his officers, and his men, and the work they did had won the respect ion of the Chinese ole. it was so often confused. The National movement was a movement by the people for the people: it was not organized it had no recognized leadership, but it stood definitely for certain principles. People charged i with being anti-Christian, anti-foreign, and Bolshevik, Tt was not anti-Christian or Bolshevik; it was only a foreign in sharing with every other country an objection to foreign domination, exploitation, and aggression. Its first desire was that the Chinese people should achieve political unity and the establishment of a united, efficient, honest, and democratic Government for the whole country.
Many of his friends had suggested that the best thing for China would be, to unite the country under one strong Dictator, say General Chiang Kai-shek or General Feng Vu-hsiang. His first answer to that was that any country under a Dictator was apt to find itself in trouble if anything happened to the Dictator; and, secondly, that the ese" people were essentially democratic. Even the Emperors! did not rule as dictators, but under them the provinces enjoyed much. latitude and freedom from interference from the central authority. The better way was the longer, surer route of educating the people up to the responsibilities of democracy, since the tendency was towards provincial authority and federal unity,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.