Oct. 29.
Oxu of the commonest criti-oisins of Chinese public affairs voiced by foreigners in this country is that Chinese officials, under. the existing order, are politicians without policies, that they are opportunists, in other words, who sail with the wind drift with the tide and devote all their energies to the task of finding the easiest short cut to Whatever end is to their own immediate advantage. There is no denying the justice of this observation, but we could be much more gracefully self-righteous in voicing it if we could always per-stade ourselves that the conduct of our own affairs in China was invariably consistent with a fixed pol lear alike to the Chinese und ourselves, and that our diplomatic representatives in Peking were rigidly faithful to t heir announced principles.
Throughout their discussion of the Lincheng incident the Chinese officials and the "Chinese press have insisted upon regard-"ing the outrage as an isolated incident. and have, therefore, succeeded in persuading themselves 4 the indemnities, sanctions, reparations and wh not demanded were unreasonable and were out of all proportion to the s rousness of the incident itself. They have also resented the fact that the representatives of sixteen Powers signed the Note when the nationals of a few only were directly involved. The only possible justification for the drastic demands and for the sixteen signatures is that the Dipplomatic Corps was warranted in treating the Lincheng outrage as a symptom of conditions in China, as an evidence of official indifference to official obligations which threatened foreign yights and the safety of foreign persons and property. The vast majority of foreigners in China are ready to grant that the Legations were right in taking this view of the raid upon the Blue Express. Those who were not at first convinced have been converted by subsequent incidents. The kidnapping of Mr. Weath-ere, the seizure and eventually the shooting of Father Malotto, the outrage on the Alice Dollar, the attacks upon shipping on the upper Yangtze, and finally the abduction of the two missionary ladies in Honan, hare
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.