Jon, 15, The statement by the Minister of Finance which we published last Monday dealing with the li in'silver was welcome and had an immediate good effect in steadying the market,—Mr Soong characteristically went straight to the root of the moatter, attributing the slump so fay as China is concerned to the stoppage of business due~ to civil war, He repudiated the notion of taxing imports of silver, saying truly that this would merely lower the world price of the metal still furth and he drew an undoubtedly accurate picture of what might be expected when "with order and communications re-estab-Mished, agriculture and industry can revive, the movement of goods can be stimulated and the export trade flourish," an im-Portant aid to the realization of this forecast would be to take off all the present taxes on exports. The $2 a picul tax on wood oil imposed a year ago at Hankow was cancelled by Mr. Soong in April after the defeat of Wuhan. But the Autumn's export season in. the Yangtze Valley was a failure attributable mainly to the taxes on produce which, in China's state, can really only be described as suicidal, The new strength in aliver during the past two days is generally ascribed to the bean export from Dairen. It is an illustration of what China's con-a Gratton wore normal and uniption of silver might be, if
jussiness confident. And it need not, perhaps, be added that the price of silver is only an index of the well-being or otherwise of the Chinese people, a vastly moxo important matter, In the near future the third plenary session of the Central Executive Committee is due to take place in Nanking. At any time an important event, it is rendered still more so, by the prevailing conditions in China. First and foremost the terrible famine in northwest China must claim attention, We published yesterday a summary of the report brought back by Mr. Grover Clark, certainly no unsympathetic investigator, to the International Famine Relief Committee, of the state of Shensi. {1 the worst section, the Wei River Valley, it is estimated that two million people died in 1929, and it is feared that as many more must die before June, as thera was no grain to plant for the spring crops, so that the winter's snow has been useless. Of Kan-ssu Mr. Grover Clark could tell nothing because it was impossible for him to get there. But in this province the horrors of the Mohammedan revolt must be a few miles from a city where there were plenty of soldiers, who had frankly warned the travellers of bandits being in the neighbourhood, but refused to escort them without payment. What can be candided but tha! either the soldiers were in league with the outlaws, or.that their Pay was so much in arrears that they would not trouble themselves to do their duty except for cash down? The reports of bri-bandage by all our correspondents in the interior become monotonous. It is to be emphasized that these writers have no desire to "crab" the Government's doings: they merely report what is happening about them. One further point may be stressed, not for the first For one foreigner attacked by outlaws, there are unknown numbers of Chinese sufferers, The Rev. Mr. Sandy, Who.managed to escape from the Communists of Tayeh by his own cleverness, saw twenty of their victims shot on the first' day of his captivity.
In setting out a few facts of China's condition to-day, we have no wish to embarrass the authorities. An official speaker in Nanking is reported as having recently accused "a certain foreign paper" of "rumour mongering" with the motive of destroying China's peace and order," for fear that "with the country unified and in peace, we may actually carry out our programme of cancelling all unequal treaties" So far as the "North-China Daily News" concerned, no suggestion could be further from the truth, It is the heartfelt wish of all foreigners in China that she should be at peace; and, as has often been emphasized by us, if she really were peaceful and unified, the treaties would disappear through their own needlessness. But peace and unity will never be attained by ignoring hard facts. As well expect a doctor, to cure 'a fever patient by disregarding the temperature chart. More than once latterly, in public utterances, General Chiang Kai-shek has spoken of the lethargy and discouragement which he finds in Nanking. Such symptoms are hardly to be wondered at: all manner of great schemes have been mooted with eager enthusiasm, only to come to nothing. Andi since General Chiang has pointedly asked for criticism by the Press, on constructive lines, may we suggest that the trouble and disappointment are due to failure to take first things first. Tt seems to us that the problem of. building a framework of constitu-{tional unification might well be held over for the time being, while leaders in all provinces, whatever their slight differences in political thinking might be, agreed to concentrate on the one task of putting down outlaws, regularizing taxation and restoring peace. The response from the Chinese people would be so instant, the prosperity their unrivalled industry would bring in all parts of the country 30 great, that in a very few months "constitutional problems would be found to have solved themselves and unification be achieved automatically. added to famine. Before such calamities "the whole nation should surely combine in the work of relief. Unhappily most provinces have their.own pressing troubles to consider. Witit the Government's" attention drawn off by civil war, bandits and Communists have been swift to renew their depredations. Even when: troops. are available, their action is too often tardy and half-hearted. We print to-day an account by an Anhui correspondent of how a missionary and his daughter were set upon by bandits but
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.