To the Editor of the "NonrH-CHINA SuNDAY News"
Si—Mr. Upton Close seems to have "made considerable progress politically since, as Mr. Josef Hall, he was a humble member of the Seventh Day Adventist Mission China, but one was scarcely _prepared to find him blossoming forth' /as a bold opponent of imperialism, irrespective of its country or creed.
Te is not so long ago since I read with considerable amusement in an American magazine an_ elaborate panegyric of Mr. Close's in which it was claimed that he had been an intimate friend and confidant of 'Marshal Wa Pei Fu, and hed in fact been his right hand man' through no fewer than five campaigns.
Even allowing for slight inaccuracies in the above we must assume therefrom that Mr. Close was, some few years ago, @ warm friend and admirer of the redoubtable Marshal, and must have supported his aims and policies, for surely he would not have borne the heat and burden of five campaigns for one with whom he was out of political sympathy.
Now Marshal Wu Pei Fu is look:
Jed upon by the great majority of] his countrymen as the—arch~ imperialist and the great enemy of those who advocate a new order of things. Mr. Close must therefore have thrown over his one time friend and patron and linked his fortunes with other persons and policies. It would be interesting to know the reasons of this change and the circumstances that have led to Mx, Close's conversion.
In conclusion I would say, as one who has had both family and personal connections with the Far East for a number of years and who has many Chinese friends, that I deeply deplore. the standpoint of writers like Mr. Close, whose chief object seems to be to try and accentuate the differences that have arisen between the so-called imperialistic nations and the "people: of the Far East. They are always harping upon the theme "East is East and West is West" and are rubbing salt into wounds hitherto caused by racial rivalries and pre-Judices, What is really needed is that men, both foreigners and Chinese, should adapt as their creed the second part of Kipling's famous ines and declare with him that "there is either ast nor, West, or birth to face, though they come from the nds of the yearth oer. W. Swausow.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.