Dec, 24.
GueAT Britain's scheme for a new policy in China is in danger of becoming like one of those presentations which are to be a great surprise, but about which everybody talks so much land such exaggerated expecta-us are formed, that the reality when disclosed' is anti-climax Jand disappointment. Let it not supposed from that word exaggerated" that we know what these proposals are but may not say. We wish we did know and we submit that we and jai other Britons have a just Jcomplaint in not yet being told. JAs we said, two days ago, there not the slightest reason why the British Government should not speak out plainly and there is every reason why it should. [When in 1908 President Taft and Mr. Knox evolved their plan of neutralizing all railways in Manchuria, at that time a bitter bone lof contention between Japan and Russia, they did not wait to consult every member of the Diplomatic Body; they just published their proposal. The present affair is one of far greater importance than the Manchurian situation in 1908 and one in which far fewer scruples as to publicity could suggest. themselves even to the most cautious.
The, "Manchester Guardian's" comment, reported in our telegrams yesterday, is a congpiculous example of the evils of First it speaks of the "failure lof the recent Commission on Extraterritoriality." In what} way a failure? The Commission merely had to report and not only did it do so with praiseworthy industry and fairmindedness, but it got its report out a lyeer sooner than it need have done. Had the report been published in full, the "Manchester Guardian would have seen where ithe real failure lay, namely, that all the admittedly earnest efforts fof the Chinese judiciary to reform the national system are wrecked by the-dominance of the militarists and there is as yet no guessing when that will cease. Further left to the resources of its own imagination by the blind reticence of the Foreign Office, our contemporary sketches the supposed outlines of ithe British memorandum with a liberality which can only have ithe effect of exciting Chinese expectations far beyond what the reality will prove. It is easy for {foreigners to make the necessary allowance in reading both the "Manchester Guardian's" antiipations and what the Belgian Premier is reported to-day saying in the Chamber at Brussels and to arrive thereby at we not too highly embroidered an estimate of what is really meant. But in this country of much rumour and vivid imagina tion this is not so and the result lof all this regrettable secrecy will, as we said above, be anticlimax and disappointment.
In another and more serious way harm is being done. Today's telegrams from Hankow speak of a new "boycott" meeting (probably attended by not a twentieth of the supposed numbers) with wild speeches Comrade Borodin and Mr. Sun Fo. The inner meaning of all this is quite clear, Mr, Lampson's visit to Hankow and the conversations he there held have greatly strengthened the saner wing of the Nationalist party and the extremists are striving to assert their power. Now comes the news, that Britain, so far from being the "Imperialist" and oppressor she has been painted, is about prove herself once' more the most liberal and trustful of all.
Thereby the ascendancy of all counsellors of reason and moderation on the Cantonese side would be still more highly ex-jolted. So Borodin counsels redoubled effort before the dread-led day of publicity arrives. Much the same phenomenon oc-Jcurred when the Canton Government declared the boycott off. The extremists at once called meetings and proclaimed a new boycott on a larger scale. As for the frothings of one Kuomintang paper in Peking, which denounces the British proposal before knowing what it is, the motive of these is so transparent as to be almost laughable. These manifestations of spleen by a minority afraid for their future ascendancy are not to be taken too seriously yet. But they may become serious, unless the For-feign Office can be induced for once to believe that open diplomacy can under certain conditions be the only sound course.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.