Justification of British "Policy Emphasized by "The Times" worse. "The. dlapatch of British roving. They are growing steadily Conations in China are not
troops to Shanghai, which, as it now appears, has necessitated Supplementaty Estimate of over £3,000,000, saved Shanghai itself from great disaster and the British community in China from tribuna tion far more severe than it had al eady borne. That measure protection has been abundantly justified by events, No action less emphatic and less frankly defined ould have availed to check an anti-British movement that was spreading through China with the effect of an organized panic. The hai Defence Force has merely occupied a position clearly established by. that Chinese law which the Chinese themselves are less and leas able to defend or maintain, Tt has not been aggressive. It has carefully refrained from acts of hostility against the Chinese people. Amid the ehnos of civil war Tt has protect-not merely British lives and British property, but the lives and the property of not a few Chine and, by maintaining order—und the carefully restricted terms of its mission—in the greatest emporium of Chinese foreign trade, it thas done' a great deal to keep. that trade alive during the gloomest period, The sum expended for the dispatch and maintenance of the Defence Force is a trifle compared with the losses which Great Britain would inevitably have suffered in China if that force had not been sent in time, Tt was not the business of the Defence Fore to interfere in Chinese politics. It has not interfered. But the effect of its coming and of the check which it imposed on certain too eon= fident plans was to give great many intelligent Chinese time and courage to think.
"Shaforce" and Kuomintang It was after the arrived of the British troops in Shanghai that the the moderate element in the Kuomintang movement took heart to Tealize—-what the developments in Hankow had already plainly shown,—that the plans of Moscow were rot disinterested; that the aid given by the Bolshevists to the Kuomintang movement was given for a purpose that, in the long run, has nothing to do with Chinese nationa-Vism, The pause at Shanghai in the headlong Kuomintang advance gave an opportunity for reflection. Some of the results were a revolt against Communism in the Kuomintang the formation of a more moder Kuomintang Government at Nt king, and an attempt to establish the control of this Government over the Yangtze valley and the Southern provinces. Borodin, Galen, and many of their associates went back to Moscow. Communists were executed right and left, Adently asserted two or months ago that Bolshevism had been stamped out in China, As force associated with a powerful Chinese movement it had, indeed, most obviously suffered 'a very severe reverse. But its place was not taken by a strong and coherent Chinese organization. The Nanking Government did not succeed, even for a little while, in exercising real and direct control over the provinces over which it claimed authority 1" the successor of the Soviet-directed Kuomintang executive which had advanced from Canton to Hankow and from Hankow to Shanghai. That area—the scene, only a year ago, of rapid and dramatic "has been during the last few months the scene of petty and destractive rivalries between very little Puchuns, whose names have emerged for a brief moment only to be as quickly forgotten. The moderato Kuomintang element have had a al opportunity. They have cut loose from: their dangerous Bolshevist associations, but they have made no Lind of intelligent approach to the Western Powers. They have not even ventured to display a. ciliatory attitude to Great Britain, whose dispatch of troops to Shang-haaf the ertial_ moment enabled them to take breath and to orga-nse and whose generous proposals, made Jast December, offered fest encouragement to any far~ and capable Chinese Nation.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.