Such public opinion as there is in China. strongly favours unification, but it is just as strongly opposed to further inter-provincial warfare and it would undoubtedly be bitterly opposed to an attempt on the part of apy of the elements in the unholy alliance" to fight their way back to power. Wu Pei-fu does not enjoy great popularity, for it is everywhere felt that he ume responsibil ativ i President Li Yuan-hung enjoys some popularity but there is no great confidence in his ability to instituro radical reforms. The present Government contains good elements out little hope of big things is put in it. The Tuchuns who support this Government are not nearly so bad as many Tuchuns who have ruled and been unseated in the past, but still they are Tuchuns and as such unpopular.
This outlines the popular attitude towards the various elements which go to make up the present regime. Tt is a sort of cool indifference. But the point is that there is no portion of the population of China, outside political and military circles, which would not a thousand times rather fie the present regime unlimited time and scope to prove itself useful or to fade away through inability to achieve anything, than have ancther nation-wide disturbance like that of the past spring. No matter how coolly indifferent the Chinese public may be to Peking and its supporters now, nor how popular new claimants to power might be, public opinion will be bitterly opposed to a fresh disturbance of the peace on the scale which the "unholy alliance'? undoubtedly contemplates.
Public opinion is a growing force in China and it is possible that the threat of fresh confusion through-cut the country in the spring. may! stimulate it sufficiently to put 2 check upon the present conspiracy
ciliatory and rational lines. From and hasten unification along con-the point of view of the foreign trader in China, as well as from the point of view of China's welfare, nothing could be more promising than a_nation-wide denunciation of further conspiracy leading to inter-provincial. wars.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.