Aug. 23.
At the close of yesiarday's leading article it was suggested that the real difficulty in the way of "'getting any forrader'' with the Lincheng sanctions was that there is no Chinese official in Peking able to do more than sign the chit-book for receipt of the Note. The situation is quite without parallel, in any country, we imagine. In 1911 and 1912 there was a period when nobody knew under what Government he was living, but that was merely a matter of adjusting the rival claims of Dr. Sun Yat-sen and Yuan Shih-kai and, subsequently, of recognition abroad- There had been a fair and square revolution and the country was free to start fresh, as other countries had done before. But now there is nothing and no_ legal means of setting up anything. There is rumour of a Presidential election in Peking. But that, under present conditions, would be nothing but a continuation of the coup d'état by which Li Yuan-hung was driven out, Unless the authors of that coup are willing to acknowledge the unlawfulness of it and to make common cause with all the other political leaders, assuming the latter to be agreeable thereto, for a fresh start, there can be no legal election. There can only be a second chapter in political piracy. And when we read that Dr. Wellington Koo has assumed office as Foreign Minister, and somebody else has consented to take charge of the Ministry of Finance, and a third party has refused to accept some
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.