Sept, 22, Not many days ago the pre-Sent writer went by appointment call on one of the chief Nationalist Ministers, who was staying in Shanghai. That the house was surrounded by a high wall was nothing unusual, Many. Chinese houses have been built with this sort of protection for many years past, But the inside of the open-work iron gate was covered with sheets of iron, through a trap-door in which, not more than six inches square, the visitor was scrutinized and his card taken, There followed long wait while the card was sent up to the house; and when the visitor was admitted he found three guards on duty, although it was broad daylight. Everyone coming to the gate, foreign or Chinese, was treated in the same way, unless well known to the guards, Now be it emphasized, this is not written with any sense of personal offence at having been kept waiting outside when one had gone by appointment, Far from it. The same thing is happening, unfortunately, at dozens of Chinese houses in Shanghai, whose owners dare not stir abroad without armed guards in attendance. But one wondered how this Nationalist Minister enjoyed having to live virtually in a state of siege, and whether he realized that the responsibility lay entirely with his own Government, Technically it is the Kiangsu Provincial Gov ernment that is to blame, but for practical purposes this is a distinction without difference. If the Nationalist Government seriously wished matters to be put right, the Kiangsu administration would have to give way. The Municipal Council can do no more. Its police are already wily taxed by the war with japper's and armed robbers td to increase the police force would entail heavy addition to the rates, Besides, why should ratepayers, foreign and Chinese, pay more, and why must well-to-do Chinese, not forgetting any: prominent Nationalist Minister who visits Shanghai, be compelled to live in fortresses, merely because the Kiangsu ' officials decline to carry out the law?
There are at the present time in the Municfpal Gaol no fewer than eighty men, all of whom have been legally sentenced to death by the Provisional Court, awaiting execution, because the Nanking authorities will not confirm the sentences. Of these one man was sentenced as far back as November 28 last year. 3 fs true that when Sun Chuanfang became Tuchun of Kiangsu there were 120 men awaiting execution in the gaol, but this was traceable to the previous times of civil war and dislocated authority, and Sun on his access sion to power lost no time in dealing with the criminals, Today it es said openly among the Chinese that no man who belongs to the so-called Green Society need ever fear execution. One would like to think this was only of the two men recently sentenced to death, one of them ecnviered on eighteen capital charges, whose sentences the Kiangeu Provincial Government caused to be commuted to imprisonment for four years and ten months respectively, without a shadow of new evidence to justify such a perversion of justice, who can wonder if men talk? "And who, in such circumstances, can wonder if armed robbers and kidnappers display contempt for the law?
Even if all these eighty men were taken out and shot to-
Bins: Code, at least as aprow, the existing state of the
pittable to the Provisional Court, igggtally inadequate to deal with Gri. of their class. Under
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.