The superb confidence of youth is stimulating. Its degeneration into unbridled arrogance and mob tyranny is depressing. The scenes of disorder now being staged in Shanghai and other places are no new manifestations of the licence in Jwhich young men and women in China have, from time to time, indulged for the furtherance of ill judged patriotism. The spectacle a few weeks oreign Minister being physically assaulted by angry students, who were permitted to go: unpunished while their victim had to disappear from public life, has been replaced by student demonstrations on a larger scale. Many of these students are mere school boys. Yet, here. in 'Shanghai, they have actually overawed the chief executive of the Chinese Municipality, a man whose record is by no' means lacking in achievement and, by successfully demanding the dismissal of an important police official, have put a premium on youthful "frightfulness." Tt is: easy to offer prescriptions for the treatment of a malady of this kind. Tt is easy to wax, sarcastic over the timidity of an loficialdom which, apparently, is unaware of the efficacy of certain old-fashioned remedies for the proper deflation of youth-
Chiang Kai-shek has issued stern warnings. Presumably the local authorities will have his complete support in taking' ithe necessary steps to recover their control of the situation. No-one, except those who look no further than the end of a rifle barrel, will envy them their task, But' it will "have to. be ftackied and tackled quickly. General Chang Chun is a man of resource and he +has now the dual objective of vindicating his own personal prestige and fulfilling his official obligation to] maintain law and order. It! would be surprising if he were unequal to the call.
These serious ebullitions of student violence. raise grave uneasiness. They reveal such
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.