Considering the England has been trading and quarrelling with China since the 18th century, it is astonishing how little our Governments know of Chinese political trid social conditions. Our have been lost.
It is a new foreign policy to leave our traders and their property to be.
stroyed by barbarian East, and, if pursued, would end in the abandonment of ' our Eastern commerce. Palmerston, with his "insolent barbarian," "swept the country to his back, only because a few Chinese had fired at a lorcha or junk flying the British flag. That waa a long time ago, but I doubt the British people have changed much, and Mr. Austin Hopkinson was right in rebuking Mr. Trevelyan for thinking that the workers are such contemptible folk as to oppose, for the sake of their wages, the sending of troops to defend British lives abroad. The member for Central Neweastle went on to say there had been a serious drop in the value of British exports to China. In 1926 the value was £9,269,000; in 1027 it had fallen to £5,194,000, cotton piece goods having declined 60 per cent. Lancashire knows these figures but too well. Mr. Trevelyan serted that in spite of this fact, "the imports of foreign goods into China had been increasing" and that "Lancashire was being olockaded at Shanghai," a nonsensical statement, which' was cheered by the Labour party.
'What does this' epigram mean? Where do the increased foreign imports come from, and how are they blockaded at the only safe seaport? T know indeed that our dear cousins the Americans have been working tooth and nail to steal our Chinese trade. But where do they land their' goods? "And if the fact be true, surely it is an argument against evacuation and in favour of redoubled efforts to keep the British flag flying.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.