This year, however, no such ples sant middle course is available in China, The foreign residents of this country are tired of being assured that conditions can get no worse, The Chinese officials have abandoned all pretence of offering tus greater security and comfort and fare pledged as a people to insure our supreme discomfiture in this and all other ensuing years. Our: Governments and. their diplomatic agents here are likewise pledged to aid and abet the Chinese in this their highest "legitimate" aspiration by every means in their power and to impress upon us that our terests represent one, or three, or six per cent, of the national trade of this or that nation, and that these are contemptible considerations when balanced against their desire to prove to themselves and to the world their ardour for the self-determination of weaker nations, as evinced in their willingness to see China reduce herself to a state of utter barbarism und in their cheer~ fal assent to the Chinese employ ment of Soviet Russia so that the self-determined effort may be the more thorough.
"Legation Quarter's Acceptance The foreign residents in every part of this once huge Empire have Had occasion to observe that there are in Peking no plenipotentiaries or special delegates, however experienced, observant or intelligent, who have the slightest inclination to Jeopardize their jobs or compromise their political future by voicing their private opinions. In private there is searcely an official agent here who has not voiced his complete disaccord with the policy. of his Government, but in public there is also none' who has even hinted at the repudiation of Government's policy and certs none who thinks enough of us oF of the outsider's accumulated invest ments of three centuries to suggest that he would rather resign than betray us. There is not one, in the writer's experience, whether through direct contact or through accurate hearsay, who has not protested that in his personal opinion the policy of the Powers in this country is all wrong, but that he the personal representative or as the third or fourth secretary for the representative, or as the runner for any or all, is only the mouthpiece of his Government, the mirror: in_no wise' responsible to the local communities of his nationals; in no wise bound to convey to his Government his heterodox opinions upon the Far Eastern situation, and least of all bound to resign and throw in his hand when,: in his: opinion, his: instrue~ pions. from home run counter to, the interests of, his country and... his people in this part of the world. actually face to face with a rigid alternative. We must either get. ing the authority of our misinformed and misguided home governments to dictate the terms of our further residence in this country.
At this season every year, for the past five years, the Chinese have despondently remarked that they were passing through the worst riod in their history since the ive Dynasties, the thoroughly chaotic epoch which, nearly 1,000 years ago, intervened between the collapse of the T'ang Dynasty and the conquest of North China by the Lino Tartars. whose dominion.was coexistent with that of the- exiled one degenerate native Sung Dynasty in the South. The period of the Five Dynasties was not the first nor the worst of these eras of seemingly hopeless anavehy in Chinese history, but it was the last of them that can be fairly with the present. Every the present they have been tempering this painful comparison with the dark era that followed the decline of the T'ang Dynasty, with express sions of hone and confidence in the future—feebler each year it is true, but never admitting despair. This year we again hear parallels drawn between the present state of things and the ghastly Five Dyn: ties but, from the sober and scholarly element, no references to the possibility of imminent improvement, no attempts at prophesy of any sort, In fact. They simply shrug. their shoulders, eay "Who and gloomily, return to an analysis of the plots' and counterplots of the immediate present.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.