Peking, Sept. 25.
That "a soft answer turneth away wrath" is a maxim fully appreciated by Dr. Wellington Koo, is obvious from the style, tone and text of the reply to the Lincheng Note, submitted yesterday morning to the Diplomatic Body. There is a great deal of verbal comment. upon this reply going the rounds, in and out of the Legation Quarter, which might be very discomiting to Dr. Koo and to his colleagues in the present Peking ({dministration, but all such comments are prefaced—in the Legations particularly—by favourable remarks upon the uniform tone of courtesy and conciliation in which the document is written. The courtesy of the note is all the more marked because its style is in such striking contrast to that of the scores of highly impertinent documents received by the diplomats from Dr. Koo's several returned student predecessors in his present office, There can be no doubt that this document is, from the foreigner's point of view, dangerously polite. Its urbanity and suavity will make a profound impression throughout the world upon the hundreds of highly placed beauroerats. whose knowledge of real conditions in China is pitifully superficial but in whose hands rests the destiny of foreign interests in China. Forwarded to Europe and America, it will make an impression (there is no use denying it, for we are in a sufficiently desperate position to face facts) which will go a long way towards offsetting, at a stroke of the pen, whatever impression thas been made during the past few years by the most studied and conscientious, as well as by the most hectic, reports which 16 diplomatic agents in Peking have been able to send along for burial in beaurocratic pigeon-holes. In short, this note proves that, from the Chinese nationsdistic point of view and in accordance with the traditional interpretation of the term diplomacy, Dr. Wellington Koo is the most astute and valuable diplomat: of the modern generation. W. W. Yen would have written a reply which would howe enraged the Home. Governments and which, upon publication,. would have won for them the sort of popular indignation that warrants drastic replies and troop movements, C. T. Wang (the writer is quoting anonymous Legation opinions) would have revealed a shallow hypocrisy which would have had the same general effect. Dr. Koo has written, with great finesse and in an impersonal vein, a document which grants next to nothing and yet yields the impression. after a cursory reading, that cil is granted and conceded. The impression which this has made upon the Diplomatic Body, within which few delusions are now entertained, is symptomatic of the impression which the document will make in the Home bureaux, where the staff of life is politic self-deception.
Tu recording these local opinions the writer is not throwing bouquets across Dr. Koo's footlights. He is not even trying to give credit where credit is due. He is only trying to give an ida of a local reaction to the reply in Peking, where conditions in China are to some degree understood, to show how dangerously insidious it will be when it reaches the home-side foreign offices and the home-side press,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.