Sinister Predictions With Little Justification how Oun Own Connesroxoent Chengtu, Dee. 31.
"On pins and needles" aptly describes the anxiety as Christmas approaches.. There are rumblings neath the quiet surface. Missionaries, beware! On Saturday, Sunday, and Monday keep within your compounds, for a communistic clique darkly is plotting a coup de main. Something terrible, something. striking, something" to arouse, the masses, is contemplated.
the' Chinese Christian leaders who mostly are perturbed. Whatever sinister designs may be awaiting some auspicious moment for execution, there has not been any manifestation of ill-will to for-coigners, by the masses who throng tthe navily-paved streets, and yet the matter has been considered serious enough to call a meeting of the Szechuan Christain Council's sub-executive, to consider the steps necessary to counteract any sudden uprising, or meditated attack upon 4 foreigner or foreigners. The my-serious attack by @ supposed madman a year and a half ago, with such fatal results, still is fresh mary. Deranged brains made a fine cloak to stifle serious investigation. The Christmas season acts as a red flag to stir up all who are inclined to see "xed."
Fortunately, the Intter are in the: great minority, and are found among. a few students whose leaders were prominent in the troubles of last. year, especially in the attempt to disorganize the Union University. Apart from disfiguring walls, especially those of the mission compounds, with scraggly written' Posters, containing the now timeworn platitudes, and a little rumpus. before the American Methodist Church, where objections were made to using the walls for such Paganda, and which resulted in several students being carried off to military camp, and others beaten, the holiday season passed quietly.
The "pins and needles" sensations, however, are more serious in the finaneinl and political spheres. Those two are very intimately connected. Szechuan is divided into at east five little kingdoms, where imperiatism, or "ti quo chu" is rampant. In these kingdoms, in their relation one with the other, imperialism well may be explained by an old phrase, "sun jen li chi (to do others for one's own advantage). Every feudal lord is looking most jealously upon his neighbour, and. each has ambitions to extend his jurisdiction. 'The weaker sooner or ater go to the wall, hence a feverish and insatiable desire to drum yeeruits, and maintain a standing army' equal for any emergency.. Those lords have not only their neighbour lords to fear, but they must ever keep an anxious eye upon, their ambitious underlings. If in home polities the phrase that "every man has his price" was current, there are good reasons to believe that the same may be true in China. That price may be to usurp his master's lordship; more often, however, it is a matter of gold and silver, These are propitious days for the under-affeers, who hold strategic Posts, for if one's will is thwarted, he can change his allegiance,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.