Sept. 18
One of the most usual political errors is reasoning by paradox' cal analogies. The process is something like this: if a revolution produced certain results in Jcountry A. then revolution should produce the same results in country B, and that, in spite of the fact that the two countries have nothing in common except the experience of disorder. It was this illogical view of history which led the Kuomintang into the error of Sovietism. The us-sumption that because the Rus-sinn people were coerced into the acceptance of a dictatorship of the proletariat as exercised by 'a single political group, the Chinese would submit to a similar dictatorship. ignored fact that the Russians had, for centuries, been accustomed to the despotism of the Tsar, while the Chinese have lived in a condition of intense individual freedom, approaching, from a modern political standpoint, anarchism. Sovietism has failed in China just as feeding a Mongolian meat-eater on a European balanced will fail to. prevent starvation. Just as it takes generations to affect a permanent change in the habits of metabolism, so it takes centuries to change the inherited conceptions of the relations between the individual and the State.
Now come the opponents of Sovietism with another cut-and-dried political panacea.—They have seen how easy it was for Signor Mussolini to achieve post-revolutionary order by a policy of dictatorship and suppression. how Kemel Pasha has achieved peace. order, unequal treaties and similar miracles by a policy of suppress sion and dictatorship. Therefore, let it be: tried at All facts in the comparison are ignored except the single one that in both Italy and Turkey, the system of Government had to be changed and that in both countries, it was changed with a notable degree of success. Area, population, the history and psychology of the people, communications—everything that is real and important is ignored, except the mere fact of successful change.
A comparison of area and population shows the followin Population Turkey...... 14,000,000
In a word, China is ten times larger than Turkey and forty times larger than Italy; Turkey is as large as Manchuria and Kuangtung together; while, Italy the size of the province China has a population ten times larger than that of Italy and approximately twenty-five ti that of Turkey; while Ital the population of the province of Kuangtung and Turkey that the province of Fukien. Stated in this somewhat statistical manner, the immensity of China's problem as compared ith that of Italy and Turkey becomes more evident, Then, with regard to Turkey, it must be noted that before Kemalism had an opportunity to prove its worth, Turkey lost almost two-thirds of her population and half of her territory during the Great War—thus, diminishing in political and commercial importance.
Politically, the liberty-loving peoples of the old Turkish Empire had won thei freedom from Turkey before Kemalism stemmed the tide of diminution; when in Italy, Mussolini came war-weary country, suffering from depreciated currency and over-population with a gospel of industrial efficiency which could only result in an adequate supply of bread to increasingly urbanized population.
In Tui key, despotism and dictatorship characterized the political experience of the remaining, principally Tur elements of the population, while the sacrificed democracy for bread. China has known neither democracy nor dictatorship: there has rather been a hist ical sistance to government, wh ich must be taken into account in the application of any western political formule to the Chinese people.
It then comes down to the reiteration of the axiom that no form of government will succeed in China which does not.take into full account the character-tic. political heritage of the Chinese people. That must i clude a large measure of local tonomy must be demo-eral it must afford the people a loud voice (like the Emper bell); it must not be repressive. It was a hopeful sign that China is returning to the ways of the Chinese when the Kiangsi she keepers put up their shutter measures which may be taken so ito alter or amend existing legislation as to give greater power to local authorities to suppress unnecessary noise, which is disturbing to the lieges"—with particular reference to the hours between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. Now when Britons are referred to as "lieges," the situation is becoming serious.
Many people wrote letters to the papers, An eminent physicidn gave a vivid description of the mechanical delicacy of the ear and the impossibility of preventing it from transmitting at Toast the effects of noise to the brain. Man, one reflects, is less fortunate than the, deaf adder, which gets over the difficulty by "pushing one ear against the dust and stopping the other with end of her ta But the upshot of it all, according to this physician, is, that headache, restlessness, sleep= Iessness, and disturbed nights—to some persons, especially the sick, acute agony—are experienced. These give rise to senseless and disintegrating fears; the mind as result is filled with morbid preoccupation, $0 that concentration becomes impossible to the mental worker, who either succumbs to Phobias, obsessions, and _psychas~ thenia, or endeavours in self-defence to soothe himself by drug addiction or by the help of some intoxicant, only aggravates his condi tio It sounds worse than the symptoms described by patent medicine advertisements, And these feeling words the phy: jsician shows the uselessness of all remedies within the power lof the ordinary liege:—
"Virulent invective or violent: declamation is futile to prevent the noises from—mechanically-driven craft which are without doubt affecting the national welfare.
One pictures a decorous window Street flung up and streams of "virulent invective" from its dignified owner, while the joy-riders go on their way hooting, and shrieking with laughter. Another writer finds that noise is simply Nature's revenge for the base uses to which we compel her. "The more we harness the forces of Nature the the louder she ims, and roars Yet another doctor points out that the law itself is actually 2 promicter of noise man may not beg quietly. by must make & noise on some nyusieal" be against excessive taxation. That, lus of his Majesty's hewes.
course, is a democratic ex-which is perfectly true and pression of opposition, which no equally absurd. And the writer dictatorship can suppress. quotes a clergyman to the effect that the law compels him to ving. bell before a service in hi
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.