Keo to China cannot be permit~ return of Dr. Wellington
ted to pass unnoticed, Dr. Koo definitely associated himself with Marshal Chang Tso-lin's Government in Peking and fell! when it fell. His property was confiscated; his house in Peking was turned into a Kuomintang shrine and he went into exile in France, Suddenly he retimed to: China, left his ship in Japan and' travelled directly to Mukden, where he apparently is under the protection of Marshal Chang Msueh-liang, in spite of the fact that an order for his arrest, issued by Nanking, still stands, It is understood that Marshal Chang has petitioned the Nation= al Government to permit Dr, Koo "to atone for his sins," but that permission has thus far not been. granted.
Dr. Koo signed the Peking' Agreement of 1924, with Soviet Russia, The agreement was ly negotiated by Dr. C. 'T. Wang but his draft was rejected after it had been signed by Dr. Wang and M, Karakhan. Then Dr. Koo, as Minister of Foreign Affairs, continued the negotiations and signed the treaty. That treaty and its Mukden counterpart is effective to-day and binds Soviet Russia and China. It is the treaty over which the present conflict is raging. Dr. Koo, as the official who signed it, is presumed to be authority' on Sino-Russian relations. Dr. Koo's arrival at the present time, his immediate visit to Mukden and the known fact that he could not come to this country unless he were guaranteed the protection of Marshal Chang—Hsueh-liang, opens a very-large question a3 to whether it is not possible that Mukden has plans of its own with regard to Soviet Russia, No one knows what is happening in Manchuria, No one has sufficient facts to form a judgment, but it is impossible to ignore the gathering in Manchuria of the' older Peking poli ticians, the irreconeflables who' have continuously refused to change their politics and join the Kuomintang.
Nor can one forget the fact that personal antagonism has always existed between Dr. C. Wang and Dr. Wellington Koo: In the days of Yuan Shih-kal that enmity began to make itself felt, and at the Versailles Conference it became a question of considerable concern to China's friends. It has continued wnabated since then when Dr.
Wang was negotiating the Peking Agreement with Mr. Karakhan, It was known in Peking that Dr, Koo would prevent Dr. Wang's signature from sealing the pact, and that nctually occurred. In the Waichiaopu, in the old days, there were three main cliques, namely, the followers of Dr. "Koo, the. followers of Dr. W. W. Yen and the followers " of Dr. 'C. T, Wang. This grouping of diplomats affected the Nanking W: chiaopt, but Dr. Wellington Koo is back on the scene and no one can say what it means or what will happen.
Dr. Koo is a person of unusual ability. He is not a plunger; rather does ko move slowly and suavely. He is almost as brilliant as Eugene Chen in hi essays, but he tends to write less as the years go by. Rather is he given more to playing internal politics, as a kind of binding force among the elder politicians. He has always been extremely conservative, even at the beginning of the Republic when most young men were carried away by the enthusiasms of democratic ideals and institutions, He never joined the Kuomintang, if we remember correctly, rising as.a bureaucrat in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Continued on page 8.)
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.