mintang agitators have seized on with notable success in order to unite the masses in a common protest.

ex

The so-called 'unequal treaties' which seventy-odd years ago gave to foreigners the privileged status referred to above are a much exploited factor in the Nationalist campaign. There are Chinese who will unblushingly attribute all of China's ills to these international agreements. There are foreigners who will assert with marked emphasis and some warmth that the treaties have nothing to do with the case. It hardly need be suggested that the truth lies somewhere between these two tremes. There is plenty that is wrong with China for which no foreign treaty can be held responsible. But it is also true that times have changed since the mid-nineteenth century, and that permeating the whole Chinese psychology, giving point to every accusation against the foreigner, there is now a deep rooted resentment that the struggling nation should not be master in its own domain. It is a fact that the treaties play an important part in determining Chinese opinion, and neither the fact nor the opinion is likely to change merely because we choose to ignore it. The situation among the masses is this. Almost every Chinese has been told that these treaties were forcibly imposed on China for the benefit of foreign Powers. And for the vast majority, too ignorant to understand the complications involved, who know only that they and their country have 'eaten bitterness' for the past fifteen years or more, it is sufficient to be told that this miserable national condition is a direct result of the unequal treaties. Absurd as it may seem, there is just enough truth in this position to justify it in the eyes of an unscrupulous minority whose chief interest lies in rousing China's dumb millions to political consciousness.

Such is the basis of the popular support given to the anti-imperialist movement. Every nation having unequal treaty relations with China - - this still includes America is regarded as imperialistic. 'Down with Imperialism and 'Down with the Foreigners' are slogans peculiarly fitted to express the negatives of patriotism to unlearned masses who find this the easiest way to express their pent-up feelings. These phrases just suit their emotional state, while Chinese radicals and Russian advisers, eager to produce a classconscious union of farmers and laborers, have in them a rallying cry both simple and appealing.

Turning from the ignorant masses to the sober opinion of educated Nationalist officialdom, we find an equally unequivocal position. Eugene Chen refers to the treaties as a 'system of invisible conquest in the form of international control.' 'Chinese nationalism,' he says, 'demands back the independence of China. Our terms are cancellation of the unequal treaties on which the régime of foreign imperialism in China is based.' Chiang Kai-shek states the case with soldierly directness: "We shall have equality, and any treaties which do not give us that equality with other nations of the world shall cease to exist as far as we are concerned.'

Through the clash of rival interests in China to-day it is indeed difficult to discern any fundamental truth. But beneath the catchwords of 'communism' on the one hand and 'imperialism' on the other the immediate tendencies of the conflicting forces are fairly apparent. British, Americans, and Japanese, with property interests at stake, think in terms of what they possess and want to hold. Russia, whose abandonment of her treaty rights in China has constituted one of her chief claims to Nationalist good will, thinks in terms of what she has not

and wants to obtain. The former labor under the psychological disadvantage of appearing to defend a relic of the old régime, while the latter, with everything to gain and nothing to lose, has the psychological advantage of appearing to support the new.

This distinction is a most important one. Both foreign groups are working for their own interests. But whereas Russia is doing it through the medium of the Nationalist movement, England, America, and Japan appear to have been doing it through the medium of that very treaty system which the Nationalist Government is so determined to alter. Viewed in this light, it is not difficult to understand either the success of the Russians or the measurable failure of the Powers. For, despite conciliatory gestures of recent months on the part of the latter, the root of the trouble remains. And, until a mutually satisfactory agreement is reached on the whole treaty question, foreign enterprise in China will remain at best a stalemate.

There are those who wish to see foreign business and foreign missions reinstated by force of arms. Even granting such a policy to be possible, it would be possible only in centres within range of foreign guns namely, the coastal namely, the coastal cities and those along the Yangtze Valley. And this would mark only the first step. Reinstatement proper depends not only on the foreigner but also on the Chinese. Strikes and boycotts have proved effective in the past - as Japan and Britain have learned to their

Bolsheviki. To persons who mean by this the saving of China for British or American business it might be suggested that a possible method for competing with Bolshevist enterprise would be to adopt the policy of enlightened self-interest which the Bolsheviki themselves have found so successful.

To those who mean the saving of China for the Chinese it might be pointed out that the millions who swarm within China's house at present are in no mood to be set in order by the West. Any attempt at the exercise of an international police power, however benevolent, might well produce or strengthen Bolshevism in China, as it did nearly a decade ago in Russia, more surely than any other means. If the Chinese are to kill the Bolshevist ogre, they will probably have to do most of the killing themselves.

The end of the Peking régime looms nearer, and with it the end of the old treaty system. Transition there certainly will be-a transition attended by extensive loss to foreigners and infinitely more to those Chinese of all classes who have long depended on the stability of foreign institutions. Many foreign concerns will have to pull themselves up by the roots and start afresh. But although the new order carried up from the South may hold in store much temporary misery and loss for Chinese and foreigner alike, the facts are that it has already arrived, that nothing now can permanently check its development, and that in its sensitiveness to the spirit of foreign diplomacy, as in its inward and fundamental vitality, it is something quite different from any Chinese régime we have ever known before. To realize these facts, in all their implications, is the beginning of wisdom in dealing with China to-day.

THE POSITIVE NEGATIVES OF

NEW ENGLANDERS

of the General, as a worn little woman came to the gate. 'Would you?'

'Wa-al,' drawled the woman, 'ef I'm to have any apples, I do-ant know but as na-ow's as good a time as any ter have apples.'

'Wh-wh-a-a-t?' gasped the favorite friend's familiar voice.

'If you suppose,' I said, in my most didactic tone, 'that I cannot accept your invitation, why did you extend it?'

After a pause my friend burst into a peal of laughter, followed by 'Because I am a New Englander, and don't want to commit myself— to having really asked you, in case you said you could not go. Maybe it is a sort of selfdefense, and maybe it'

I accepted and we went, but the matinée did not interest me nearly so much as did my recollections of other New Englanders and their negatives, or, if not positive negations, there can be such a thing, noncommittalisms.

if

- at least

'You can never get a definite answer out of a New Englander,' one of General Stark's descendants said to me, the first year I came to this delightful corner of our country.

We were driving home from her farm, the car laden with apples. We stopped at the home of her laundress; yard overflowing with children, but no sign of apple trees, or of any other

crop.

'I thought you might like a basket of apples,' said the great-granddaughter

That evening my sister-in-law said to me, 'Let's have a party. Go telephone so-and-so and so-and-so. That's a dear.'

I did as I was bid, and each guest made answer in words to this effect: 'Yes, I think I can come.' 'Will you let me know, definitely, when you know if you can?' was my invariable query. 'But I think I can.' That was all. Puzzled, I reported to my sister. 'Oh,' said she, 'is n't that lovely?'

- and began at once to prepare her menu, counting guests. 'You can't prepare until you know definitely,' I suggested. 'Oh, they'll all come,' she tossed my suggestion aside. She did not even understand it.

Next I wanted to make an appointment with my dentist. In his outer office I made known my desire to his attendant. She opened his engagement book, ran down the pages, paused, pencil poised above a blank space. 'On Tuesday, at 2.30, I think he can see you,' and began to write my name. 'Will you telephone me, when you are certain?' I suggested. 'Oh, I think 2.30 Tuesday is all right'; and, with no uncertainty, she inscribed my name in the fair white space.

and wants to obtain. The former labor under the psychological disadvantage of appearing to defend a relic of the old régime, while the latter, with everything to gain and nothing to lose, has the psychological advantage of appearing to support the new.

This distinction is a most important one. Both foreign groups are working for their own interests. But whereas Russia is doing it through the medium of the Nationalist movement, England, America, and Japan appear to have been doing it through the medium of that very treaty system which the Nationalist Government is so determined to alter. Viewed in this light, it is not difficult to understand either the success of the Russians or the measurable failure of the Powers. For, despite conciliatory gestures of recent months on the part of the latter, the root of the trouble remains. And, until a mutually satisfactory agreement is reached on the whole treaty question, foreign enterprise in China will remain at best a stalemate.

There are those who wish to see foreign business and foreign missions reinstated by force of arms. Even granting such a policy to be possible, it would be possible only in centres within range of foreign guns - namely, the coastal cities and those along the Yangtze Valley. And this would mark only the first step. Reinstatement proper depends not only on the foreigner but also on the Chinese. Strikes and boycotts have proved effective in the past - as Japan and Britain have learned to their cost- and labor unions could and probably would so obstruct the process of trade as to make persistence under such conditions more costly than withdrawal.

There are those who want intervention in order to save China from the

Bolsheviki. To persons who mean by this the saving of China for British or American business it might be suggested that a possible method for competing with Bolshevist enterprise would be to adopt the policy of enlightened self-interest which the Bolsheviki themselves have found so successful.

To those who mean the saving of China for the Chinese it might be pointed out that the millions who swarm within China's house at present are in no mood to be set in order by the West. Any attempt at the exercise of an international police power, however benevolent, might well produce or strengthen Bolshevism in China, as it did nearly a decade ago in Russia, more surely than any other means. If the Chinese are to kill the Bolshevist ogre, they will probably have to do most of the killing themselves.

The end of the Peking régime looms nearer, and with it the end of the old treaty system. Transition there certainly will be a transition attended by extensive loss to foreigners and infinitely more to those Chinese of all classes who have long depended on the stability of foreign institutions. Many foreign concerns will have to pull themselves up by the roots and start afresh. But although the new order carried up from the South may hold in store much temporary misery and loss for Chinese and foreigner alike, the facts are that it has already arrived, that nothing now that nothing now can permanently check its development, and that in its sensitiveness to the spirit of foreign diplomacy, as in its inward and fundamental vitality, it is something quite different from any Chinese régime we have ever known before. To realize these facts, in all their implications, is the beginning of wisdom in dealing with China to-day.