The Cabinet resignation also; afforded Chang Shao-tseng and his Government.an opportunity to pin President Li down to a declaration of his position, to help Dr. Sun and! this colleagues by advertising the! fact that the ventures of Shen Hung-; yin and Sun Chuan-fang in the South were being carried out under Wu Pei-fu's auspices and were therefore the strokes of tyrant and fan autocrat, and to put Wu Pei-fu once more in the position of aa outlaw and a rebel against Peking's sacred authority. Thus if the coalition proved still to be in existence and was still inclined to undertakel Wu's elimination, it provided all; parties to the league with the essential "cause." To this degree the resignation as a tactical move} was a complete success. President, Li was brought to insist upon the Cabinet's retention of office and to; explain to the world in a vague andi timid challenge to the militarists, in which he was careful not to mention Wu Pei-fu, Sun Chuan-fang or Shen Hung-yin by name, why he was retaining the Cabinet and approving its policy. To all intents and pmposes this public statement pledges Peking to the support of Dr. Sun and outlaws Wu Pei-fu. this position would have been much more frankly and openly stated had the roll call within tke coalition met with a really hearty and encouraging response.
A FEEBLE RESULT, Had there been no response at-all the situation created would have been interesting for then the Cabinet would probably have submitted genuine resignation in something of a panic. Had the response been a chorus of cries for Wu Pei-fu's scalp it would also have been interesting because it would have enabled us to prophesy a spring war on a big scale. The gentle murmur of half-hearted approval of the G ernment which the resignation elid ed certainly gave no promise of a great anti-Wu crusade. The Tsao Jui group in Tientsin, which has felt from the beginning that Chang Shao-tseng used the opportunity which their Lo Wen-kan coup had created to vault into the Premiership and that he had shown scant appreciation of this fact, publicly announced that the Government might come or go. The encouragement of other friends and supporters was scaresly as hearty as the purely formal and doubtless somewhat cynical wire from Wu Pei-fu himself, in which he solemnly ex-borted the Government to hold on.
To summarize the situation, the sole fruits of the resignation as gesture were the commitment of President Li to the policy of supporting Sun Yat-sen against Wu Pei-fu, the frank advertisement of the weakness of the anti-Wu coalition as a fighting wait, and a demonstration of the fact thata Peking Government these days requires very little coaxing to yvemain in office. The. Government is of course prepared now at make a firm moral" stand against Wu Pei-fu and his agents, Shen Hung-yin and Sun Chuan-fang, in Kuangttmg and Fukien, and also in Kiangsi for that matter, but having committed itself, it is in no better position than it was to offer material resistance to Wu's agents who will probably have on their side that nine-tenths of the law which is possession within a very short time, Wu's ENFORCED POSITION, While Peking and the political groups upon which Peking now relies for support elicit no sympathy, Wu Pei-fu's preseat tactics fill anyone interested either in Wu Pei-fu, himself, or the reunification and pacification of China with no little trepidation. Hlis attitude towards the all-absorbing problem of bringing China under one respectable and responsible Government, has obviously undergone a great change since last autumn. He used to think that all China needed was an opportunity. He thought that if a few conspicuous undesirables were
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.