Apr. 20.
"Hankow, since the time of its great ordeal of five years ago, has developed in political importance by reason of the pluck and successful attempt. made by the inhabitants of the former British Concession to adapt themselves to the changed and difficult conditions brought about by the jereation of the Special Administrative District No. 3 under Chinese Control tempered by the terms of the Chen-O'Malley Jagreement. In spite of all handicaps—not the least of them being the frequent change in the personality of the Director, ithe result of political vicissitudes in Nanking,—there has been evolved a rough and ready system of Sino-foreign cooperation which has maintained a very fair specimen of representative municipal government. This is all the more striking: because in two other ex-Concessions which have passed completely into Chinese control, the representative factor does' not exist, As a leading channel for' ithe expression of British opinion jin Hankow the British Chamber, jof Commerce has played a great part in supporting this reconstruction. It has been fortunate in. the selection of its Committee and in the Chairmen chosen to lead its deliberations. and to guide its policy. For that reason, especially in view of the great' calamity through which the Wuhan area passed last summer, the speech of Mr. C. D. Dixon at the annual] meeting of the Chamber yesterday deserves careful study and appreciation. In a sense the British in Hankow occupy a position which enables them to speak with special authority on problems of common interest to Chinese and Foreigners. their bitter moments they may have regarded themselves as the "vile bodies" on which august experiments have been made. In their more buoyant mood: they can claim that ith been their privilege to show that, with goodwill and resolution' the extremity of the diplomatist can be turned into the opportunity of the practical politician.
Hankow's unenviable position jin the closest proximity to the constantly shifting and often dangerously expanding area of bandit-rule has aroused much anxiety from time to time. The floods of last year had the immediate effect of mitigating ithe evil, partly because the less could not include the greater. Afterwards the spread of distress fon a colossal scale tended to swell the bandits' ranks. This was further helped by the succession of political upheavals, which paralysed the efforts of the Central Government—inadequate though they had been—to cope with activities which, as Mr. Dixon's speech shows, have told disastrously on the trade of ithe Middle Yangtze port. The Han River has been practically closed to merchants for the greater part of the year. This means that access to a most valuable trade route has been intermittent, if not entirely suspended. It also means that the luckless inhabitants of the districts served by the river have been deprived of the flow of commerce from which they [can normally improve their own slender economic resources. It is not surprising therefore that the spokesmen of British merchants in Hankow should regretfully note the weakening of the 1 Govern ity in Nanking means much to the Provinees now that there has been so stringent a centralisation in financial matters. That instability has been accentuated by the world-economic stagnation, by the Japanese problem and by the terrible natural calamities of 1931, It has, unfortunately, derived no little' of its baneful persistence from inherent political weaknesses to the eradication of which it were high time that China devoted herself with greater zeal than haa been apparent in the past, So often, in disc! sing this spread of banditry, it is the fashion to lay stress on the difficulties—admittedly real—encountered by regular troops operating in hilly or lake-broken country against guerilla. bands. Mr, Dixon opportunely reminds the public of the extent to.whieh those difficulties have been lessened by the work of foreign naval flotillas on the Yangtze, if foreign warships were not there to keep the river traffic open, the damage done to Chinese and Foreign trade and, therefore, to the economic Li the people, would be incomparably greater. Indeed the
s|nearer to Nanking than it bandit-ridden area would be tar is already. Fortunately a convietion that there has been too much political posturing and not, Jenough practical absorption the vital economic problems is finding favour among the responsible sections of Chinese thought. The view that the salvation of China can be secured less by polities than by feommerce and education may find expression in that new focussing of the vision, Mr. Dixon's speech gives it warm encouragement from a corns munity which has material interests in China and, at heart, sincere and practical sympathy for the people, besides being independent of political pre-Judices or desires for political favours. In the working out of Jo national revolution it $s necessary for the observer to be patient, to take the long view Jand to discriminate between the ephemeral and the lasting symptoms. Tt is in that spirit Hankow Britons have "carried fon" in circumstances of extreme difficulty and. discouragement, It is in that spirit that they have been able to put on record 80 valuable an achievement in cooperation with the people among whom they trade, work and live,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.