It is to be taken for granted that any small measure of intervention, however beneficial to China, which does not go the length' of intimidating all classes of military leaders and politicians, will be not only worthless as a preventive of trouble but will be a positive incitement to serious trouble.
The popular attitude here is that intervention in any form will be such a risky and expensive experiment, that we are not warranted in undertaking it until every other effort to bring China's political and military leaders to a sense of their obligations has failed. The commercial returns from trade with a country under military occupation very seldom pay the expenses of an expeditionary force. From a purely business point of view it is distinctly to our own advantage, not to mention China's advantage, to force the Chinese with power to assume their own responsibilities and discharge their own obligations before we consider providing them with Government and protection. It is needless to say to the China resident that neither our Legations nor our Governments have done anything' along these lines except to write notes to the half empty foreign office of a puppet Government. It is also needless to point out that the proposed
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.