Dee.
Within a comparatively few days Dr. C.C. Wu, Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Nanking administration, has supplied the press with three interesting compositions for publication after a long and marked silence. In a Chinese official such a display, of energy is sometimes a sign of reviving assurance and confidence, but much more often it is evidence of a lack of both. From the tons of Dr. Wu's statements on the matter of wireless installations in the International Settlement and the French Concession; the wholly irregular. unwarranted denunciation of the Spanish Treaty; and, now, the opposition to the Morgan loan to the South Manchuria Railway, we gather that there is, in his display of assurance a great deal of the arrogance of despair. His so-called government has no rights in any of the matters upon which he has written, except these which it assumes." Enjoying no internation recognition as a de facto or a de jure, authority in China, remarks and protests and the like from Dr. Wu must be in the sight of the Powers the remarks and protests of a private Chinese individual, though resenting, as it happens, an organization of Chinese with a criminal record and the temporary physical power to do quite a lot of damage.
When Dr. Wu addresses himself to foreign governments, therefore, on Lehalf of the nonexistent Chinase nation, he entitled to just about the same consideration that Washington might give to Mr. A.J. Cook, let us say, were he, as the leader of a tadieal labour group, to cable communications about the world in Great Britain's name protesting against President Coolidge's decision to build more cruisers. Dr. Wu is not ignorant, moreover, that this is approximately his position, so that the higher his pretensions to dictate to this or that foreign government, or even to the foreign communities here, the stronger the impression made upon us of the weakness of his position.
A self-confident government, enjoying real authority and assured of both the loyalty of its people and the respect of other governments, does not have to "bluff" or assume rights which it has no claim, to cover its weaknesses, but can afford to earn its prerogatives before claiming them, to acknowledge its sins, and pay for its mistakes before claiming consideration in the name of international amity, and to discharge its obligations under old agreements before secking through negotiation the substitution of more favourable agreements. Itis only the guilty wankling among would-be-nations that blusters to cover a sense of failure and a fear of Just retribution.
In his private capacity, Mr. Wang Ching-wei, has recently made statements which are essentially a confession of the Kuomintang's criminal folly in pursuing an anti-foreign campaign of a most outrageous and barbarous character under Red! wuidanés and has suggested a radical change in tactics. We doubt Mr. Wang's particularly in his supposed revulsion of feeling' against affiliation with munism, but the confession error is on record and this is more than we have ever heard from any responsible organ of the Kuomintang or any, of the several "Nationalist" adminitrative groups. Dr. Wa knows that in international relations as in the church and in all pri vote relations between individuals, there can be no real forgiveness without confession and atonement and, that, until the sinner shows some sign of repentance, any "airs" that he gives himself can be looked upon as nothing but an aggravation of the offences of the past.
The question of wireless instellations in foreign-controlled areas of Chinese territory, is one which any competent and respectable Chinese Government would have a perfect right to bring before the Powers, and there can be no doubt that under conditions other than those of growing confusion and chaos, a real Chinese Government would get a respectful hearing, if it protested against the use of communications in China upon which it had no check. But this is just as true of extraterritorial courts, foreign police
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.