To the Editor of the "Norru-Cuina Dairy News." the China Association held Sir,—At the annual meeting of London on July 27, the chairman (Mr. David Landale), in the course of his speech, opened that "if the people of China could rid themselves of their Military Governors, who waste the country's money on the upkeep of armies for their own private aggrandizement, and replace them by Civil Governors, a great improvement would result.'
This sort of opinion, to put it shortly, is quite meaningless. To begin with, the Chinese people have never shown themselves able to displace' any type of undesirable authority placed over them, except in isolated instances, and when China was a land made up of a number of feudal states. Anyhow, the China Association used to say the same thing when China, under the old regime, possessed Civil Governors. ¢ Mandarinate used to come in for some very severe trouncing at the hands of the Association. The criticism of self gain, inertness and oppression was then as. rely applied.
when the old monarchical system some soft Mblance of order, it was At aby rate, if ever there was
permeated the country. The submission to the divine might of the Emperor was then complete, jealously guarded-as it was by every gradation of civil and. military power.
The trouble with China now is that she is getting foreignized at too great a speed in certain stratas only. A country which,
would extend from the Atlantiz placed on the map of Europe, shores on the' west to the Baltic and Caspian and beyond on the east, offers no easy problem to tackle in the way of unification and contro]. The country is too huge and unwieldy for supervision from one central point. It is not easy to see what the future will hold for China. The only bright side to the picture is that her people are possessed of a lot of common-sense, the heritage of an aged and definite civilization, and that they reasonably prefer peace to discord and disruption.
I am, ete.,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.