The present situation can traced directly to Tsao and Wu. Tsao Kun is an_unlettered man without ideas. Wu Pei-fu is a scholar who totally lacks the ability to shape a political policy. Neither of them has any higher conception of gaining his ends, however high he may conceive those ends to be, than the exercise. of force. The Shantung bandits recognize no medium but force. In this respect Tsao and Wu pursue no higher course than the bandits. And like most bandit enterprises, their career will be short. In the central provinces of North China and the Yangtze' Valley the blind pursuit of their policies is focusing upon them the attention of the whole world. The time is coming when they will completely exhaust their strength and the rest of China will hem them in and chastise them as they would chastise bandits with clubs. Conditions in this country are reaching, their climax. I am so confident that the end is in sight that I can predict that the big explosions which will mark a change in every province are actually within sight. For this reason I am content to sit still and watch things getting worse in the hope of exercising my influence in the work of reconstruction.
"You foreigners are disturbed by conditions but you are also sympathetic and want to help us out. We need your help and sincerely ask for it, but we want it firsts in the form of a clear understanding of what is going on in this country and, secondly in the form of constructive ady encouragement to right tendent cies, and pointed discouragement to wrong tendencies, If you have the understanding and patience to see us through a period of turmoil, you will have 3 2 very short time inds24 to volt for an improvement "TY did not see Sir Robert Ho Tung's telegraphic suggestion for a round table conference under foreign auspices. We should not resent the foreign auspices or any other helpful step, but this is an-ether measure for which I do not believe the time is ripe. As J have said Tsao Kun and Wu Pei-fu are not ready to talk reason yet. Their power, which is dwindling so rapidly, must collapse completely before they can oe brought into any such conference with any hope of ce-operation from them.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.