The present war presents some very curious factors: for the first time, the Kuomintang is frankly split. In the past, the Left Wing or the Kuangsi faction or whatever there was opposition, maintained an outward loyalty to the seat of party authority in Nankfhg, and continued whatever quarrel there was inside the party, This time, it is quite different, The Reorganizationists have combined with the Western Hills Conference group and they have combined with the Northern military leaders and are threatening, or may even have carried " through, the organization of a new Government, but more importantly, the establishment of a new Party Headquarters. In taking this step, the Reorganizationists irretrievably separated the party into two definite central groups each claiming the right of success sion but each developing in a different arena and with different outlook. Does this ultimately mean a two party system for China? Does it not perhaps indicate that when the People's Convention is called, if ever, there will be a two party system, such as obtains in Great Britain, the United States, and Japan?
The public is, of course, not vitally interested in party affairs, It wants peace. But the public cannot avoid the implications and results of party activity, Opposition to Nanking has been driving Nanking more and more from strictly party considerations to jan emphasis on administration. Nanking's success or failure will be judged not by its party work but by its administrative achievements. But the opposition is not. concerned with administration its task is to prove that it is simon-pure Kuomintang in every respect. It will even seek to break down Nanking's administrative processes on the groutd that they offend party ideology. Thave been asked within the past fow days: Why bother about all this. Who really cares? One might use the terse expression of the two Black Crows: Why bring that up? It has to be brought up because it will not stay down, No matter how we may question the wisdom and sensibleness of Kuomintang ideas, we cannot deny their potency, for whenever any group can prove a genuine departure from the stated programme of the party, it develops, sufficient oppositional' strength to Imake it possible for militarists to fight under a popular standard, That is what militarists through Jout the country hive been doing. Even the Communists, Ho Lung, Chu Teh, Mao Tze-tung have been doing the same thing. bandits insist that they fighting for a cause. It is no longer mere feudalism. No one dares to assert that, although as recently as 1924 Chi Heiehyuan started a war on Lu Yung-hsiang on mere feudal assumptions. In a word, the militarists, bandit chiefs, poli tical adventurers all over tite country seem to realize that they have to quote chapter and verso to get a following. Therefore, we have to assume, no matter when ther we like it or not, that the programme from which—they. quote has so thoroughly gripped ithe imagination of those people China who have any thought land imagination, that it is impossible to separate political action from these particular political ideals.
Now, these ideals unfortunately, {do not embrace the whole people of the country. They do not embrace the rising middle class, the economic class upon whose strength the Nanking Govern ment rests. They do not include the non-political intellectuals who resent the politicalization (for give the word!) of learning, They do not include freedom of thought, speech and individual faction. If there has been a split marked as the present one, and should Nanking win the Present war, would it not be pos sible for the victorious Nanking Kuomintang, to take the people into their confidence, to join with the economic middle class and the scholarly intellectual in forming a more modernly administrative Gov" ernment? Of course, the economic middle class will fight wastage, corruption, leaks of every kind, because they have to pay for these things, and the scholars will be very' critical of revolutionary heroes, but China Jand Nanking will be imimoal will have a better ' Gover
ably strengthened,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.