When the first news of Ivanoft's arrest reached Peking six days azo foreigners, in and out of the Legations jumped immediately to the conclusion that Chang Tso-lin had been encouraged by his Japanese military advisers to make a bold stand against autocratic Russian control of the here has been much gossip here about the growing restiveness of} tne Japanese militarists and of] their resentment of the Japanese' civil regime's soft-soaping, methods in China. Japanese officers in! Manchuria' have been telling thole British and American friends that} they were tired of the insolence of both the Chinese and the Russians, It isan open secret that, the Kuo Sung-lin eampagin' against Shang—Tso-lin, the—Japa Giplomatic folk' were supporting} Kuo and praying for his success, while the military deliberately over-rode all diplomatic ments and made prepers vive Chang such support thay Kuo'e cabordinates, wishing to be on the!
jing side, deserted him and lightly executed the usual Chinese treachery. The military wanted) to hold Chang in power because, they knew that Kuo could nos} control three provinces and that his loss of Kirin and Heilungkiang would mean the loss to Japanese South Manchuria of the time the military experts in Manchuria have! been telling Chinese and foreigners the Red were simply bluffing and that, in an. emergency, Russia would be so badly off for a proper fighting force—having nothing to rely upon but a few badly organized and badly equipped ions in Siberia—that she would not dare to move a man over the Chinese border. They have further inted that, so far as the Japanese] army was concerned, it would not hurt their feelings if the Russians really did something which Japanese could regard vert act and could openly resent. rakhan's Own Worst Enemy When news of Ivanoff's arrest came through last Saturday there was some reason for the prompt surmise that Chang Tso-lin had been encouraged by the Jay military folk to meet the Russian! bluff with a strenuous counter-bluff. The prospect of serious trouble in Manchuria probably ought to hava moved the Occidental observer to] tears but it really did not. Everyone derived selfish - satisfaction from the belief that a Russo-Japanese conflict, if only through jhe. medium of Chang Tso-lin, would relieve Red pressure her! and in other parts of China and would have such an enlightening effect upon the misguided Chinese who have been chorusing Karakhan's silly slogans.
Opposed to this feeling of satisfaction in the foreign bosom, there was, however, the reluctant conviction in most minds that the Soviet agents on the Chinese Eastern Railway were, in fighting the abuse of railway' servies by Chinese soldier rabble, making a (and which we should' all support in principle. We felt and said to tone another in. secret con clay "As a diversion, this is excellent, As a preceder rotten if the Chinese "If Karakhan's government were not dedicated the break-down of everything worth, supporting in this country, in. the interest of a mad political philosophy, foreign opinion would have been so solidly behind Comrade Ivanoff in his dispute with soldiers who run is against orders, break switches and defy railway executives, that the strong Russ'an bluff would have had the moral port of every outlander resident in China, A' year from now, most of us apprehend, we shall probably be sorry that we did not openly take this stand and rejoice in the courage shown by the Russians, who enjoy no extra rial advantages, in their war upon Chinese _pseudo-militarism—against unchecked and high-handed hoodlumism, in other words, The difficulty in' taking this stand, of course, is that while we are thinking about it we have to face the fact that Karakhan still has paid ruffians parading the streets of Peking, with banners flying, bawling ' against our "imperialism,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.