'A Survey of Recent Strikes and Intimidation of Authorities: {Growth of the Spirit of Lawlessness: Ruin of the Old Chinese Principle of Pupil's Subservience to Teacher By Rooney Guaexe It should be noted that in the following article Mr. Gilbert merely epitomizes facts which can easily be verified, have been reported as they occur and can be paralleled in many directions, The comment which he adds only the inevitable conclusion which any honest mind must draw, Peking, Feb. 5.
"An occasional echo of the absurd anties of the Peking students, in and out of their schools and col-
Aeges, perhaps reaches Shanghai and perhaps the Chinese papers in Shanghai are as heavily charged with news of them as the local papers are, Their doings are certainly not worth following in detail in the foreign press but they alway deserve watching and an oceasio appraisement. of them is essential to the knowledge of the existing state of China, 'The Japanese have very shrewd knowledge of what news in China is important and the ("North China Standard," an official Japanese organ, not' only Gevotes a great deal of space daily to "student polities," but features such news prominently.
And what does the Government! doit opens a new school for the sober students and calls it the National Women's University! 'This was because Feng Vu-hsiang in the right of the people to express themselves, The war in the Law College has been too long' and confused to detail here, - but during one conflict a few months ago a party of disgruntled radicals, seized the Houses. of Parliament and announced that the Law College would henceforth occupy these buildings. More latterly we have the spectacle of the Law College under the indulgent patronage of the Minister of Education, Yi Pei-chi, attempting to elect its own President. This Minister is a Kuomintang man with Bolshevist leanings, The first impression that one gathers after reading student news and hearing opinions expressed by foreign instructors in the schools, over a period of months, is that one of the most wholesome reforms that could possibly be put into effect in China would be the closing for an indefinite period of the country, except under whatsoever management. One cannot help feeling that they are having a more demoralizing effect upon the country than the feuds and conspiracies of the military adventurers because they are ruining and leading astray not only this generation but the next. There is no Government: institution in this city, with th one or two which are practically. under foreign control, which does not seem to devote ten times more attention to rabid and unreasoning revolt against discipline than to either useful or useless study. There is none without exception which the Soviet agitators do not use as bases for the spread of a spirit of insurrection against all authority, good or bad, and for the inculcation of anti-foreignism, anti. Christianism and a kind of diluted und stereotyped communism, designed for minds too feverishly busy with inanities to study anything seriously.
'A Succession of Strikes For several years we have had a constant succession of student strikes against unpopular professors, unpopular directors and unpopular Ministers of Education. More and more insistently have these half-baked children insisted One of his first steps upon assuming office was to appoint the most clamorous Red leader in Peking, Li Shih-tseng, head of the Agricultural College, hitherto a. comparatively peaceful institution. Another Red was appointed to the College of Arts and then an absurd clamour was set up in the Russian Language School for the appointment of Hsu Ch'ien (alias George Hsu) Canton's chief delegate in Peking, to the presidency of that institution, which resulted in absurdities almost too jlisckeditable to the Government to be believed.
Shortly after Dr. ©. T. Wang' assumption of office in the Wale chiaopu the Red element in the chao! called upon him and most insistently demanded Hsu's appoint ment. The Foreign Minister asked for time to consider, but he was bullied by the students and finally, actually besieged by them for five hours in his office, Hsu was eventually appointed and proceeded, to take up his post in the school, /which had meanwhile been tran: ferred to the control of the Red. Ministry of Education, accompanied by prominent Bolsheviks both Chinese and Russian. The Reds turned out in force to receive him and greeted with cheers his assertion, that he was a Bolshevik and wasn't lined of it, but at the end of the: meeting 14 recalcitrant "Whites" at the doorway raised objections to the whole proceeding, a fight. ensued and the "counter-revolutionaries" were not only badly mauled Dut officially expelled from the school by the new head, The Missionary's Dilemma upon choosing their courses of study, their text books, their hours.
cly, the standard to be imposed at examinations and the length of vacations. They have struck be-students who were oe bury endeavours, that is Bavling illogical nonsense through the Peking streets, failed to pass their examinations' and were "set back a year, They raised a terrific furore last spring when the Minister of Edveation attempted to raise examination standards so as to keep them at their studies, and won their fight! The disgraceful feud that has been going on for many months in the Girls Normal College would not have been possible in any other country in the rid, Jeast of all in Russia. The radicals who did not want to study serious things but"to preach polities and fad about the parks, ejected the sensible girls who were in the majority from the schoo] buildings, Sncluding the teachers who would not humour them. After some delay and thought the police raided the' school and took "the radicals away cly force. More latterly the jrisicals with the help of boy students. made a: surprise attack Spon the buildings and seized them, '"eslebtating the, event With a riotous And now we have the—anti-Christian association storming "the Ministry of Education with demands that all the Christian mission schools and colleges in thei country be made subject to the same jurisdictions as the Government and Chinese private schools with a view to the prohibition wus teaching. That there mneurrent movement in Ca ton to the same end suggests, the inspiration of this campaign here, What is most startling is that the Ministry of Education is not only giving ear to this appeal but is reported to have pledged itself to act.
Tt is diffeult to seo how the] missionary body at large, whether in China, England or America, can raise serious objection to control by the Chinese Ministry of Bducation, since they have denounced many public proclamation—the "unequal treaties" which give them exemption from such control and have so often expressed a desire for the abolition of extraterriteality which, they claim, sets the Christian: Church in China apart from Chinese life as a foreign institution. "Neve is hard]
see how the Legations can! Higtiofe the asiuinption of
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.