During the past five years or more, the Chinese have annually followed the setting star of Hope because, in their inmost hearts, they have looked forward to the conquest of the country by a thoroughly ruthless and heavyhanded bandit or, lacking the appearance of such 2 Messiah, to the restoration of order by an equally ruthless, understanding and thorough alien. The events of the past year have wiped out all hope of salvation from either source. AS good exploiters of a supposedly. temporary period of disorder, the Chinese officials have of course tried to stave off a final resort to the hard alternative of native or lien conquest and have had much to say of peace by "constitutional" methods, peace through round table conferences, peace through the selection of a council of Yuan Shuai (elder statesmen), peace through agreement among provincial authorities, and peace through an. assembly of popular delegates, the Fast being, in the Chinese mind, that most farcical suggestion of all.
The periodical expressions of hope solution of the situation by "talked-talk" have never _been sincere. 'They have only been designed to hoodwink the outsider in the hope that before his tolerance and patience were exhausted some ative conqueror world take the field, beat the nation flat and restore' China toa state of order, sanity and prosperity which would mot only give her a new louse of Tifecbut also satisfy the treaty and trade requirements of the outside world. 'This prelude will perhaps help the-reader fo tinderstand why the events -of the pact: year have! yedueed.the: saber Chinese'to' at)almncet apathetic state of the Ulues.- country: by politicians and military adventurers has. carried it to: the very edze of moral collapse and traditions of discipline and loyalty have given place so entirely to a new tradition of shameless bad faith that it is, impossible to build up fighting organization bigger than a man can survey from a convenient hillock without inviting treacherous betrayal from subordinates. This seems to put an end to all hope of reunification by force. No man can build up an organization big enough to conquer all China and hold it together long enough to impose his will upon the whole nation and exact, that unswerving obedience upon which the unity of China has always depended and will always depend. No leader cam pass the point where he has to delegate authority to subordinates without raising up against himself from own following a host of, potential rivals and enemies.
Less than 18 months. ago the obstinate and all conquering Wu Pel-fu, justly weary of the sickly pretence of uniting China by round-table agreement, mobiliz~ ed the entire force over which his conquests gave him claim in a supreme effort to reunite the country by force of arms and was duly betrayed by the ambitious and unserapulous Christian general.
'Through a series of breaches of promise to Wu Pei-fu, Chang Tso-lin, the Japanese, Tuan Chi-jui, the Russian Soviet ' agents, Sun Chuan-fang and others, the' Chris-jan General raised himself ina year or more.to a position where he was absolute dictator over the recognized government of China and supreme authority behind the Puppets in Peking with whom the nations of the world were called upon to discuss China's rights and spirations. And now, at the very end of the year, the nation treated to the spectacle of—this leader of an overgrown force being gently but firmly removed by his unsympathetic subordinates, Meanwhile Chang Tso-lin, Wa Pei-fu, Sun Chuang-fang and many lesser would-be unifiers of China by force have been given more or less bitter doses of disloyalty, insubordination and treachery.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.