'I may say to you quite frankly that we Chinese cannot forget that these Settlements are Chinese territory. Whilst, as long as the old treaties are still in force, we must respect the rights and privileges of the foreigners acquired by treaty, there are many disputable questions either not clearly set forth in the treaties or regarded as contrary to them which we intend to discuss frankly but in a friendly way with our foreign friends, in order that satisfactory solutions may be found within the shortest possible time. Please do not misunderstand me. We have not set up the Directorate in order to carry out any anti-foreign programme. On the contrary, we seek the full co-operation of all foreigners.'

He went on to express his desire for the thorough improvement of municipal affairs in the Chinese territory adjacent to the foreign Settlements 'so that the difference between the Concessions and the urban districts that are not Concessions may be wiped out, and both foreigners and Chinese may co-operate in the most friendly way for the creation of a new and greater Shanghai.'

A few days before this speech was made, Marshal Sun made another significant statement which is highly creditable to his patriotism as well as his readiness to face unpalatable facts. At a dinner given in his honour by the Chinese United Chambers of Commerce on May 5, he spoke as follows:

'When I pass through the foreign Settlement, I always feel a keen sense of humiliation-not because we have lost our rights but because the International Settlement, in the hands of foreigners, is so superior to our China-town. For us to demand the restoration of the International Settlement would be of little avail. What we must do is to improve our administration until it compares favourably with that of the foreigners.'

By utterances such as these, Marshal Sun proves that he is a far more enlightened patriot than the Kuomintang extremists, who think they are glorifying their country and raising its international status and prestige by blackening the characters of individual foreigners and filling the minds of their ignorant fellowcountrymen with infamous lies about the alleged contempt of British 'Imperialists' for Chinese lives, and

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alleged British designs upon the honour and independence of the Chinese State.

Another indication that Marshal Sun combines patriotism with patience and sagacity lies in his choice of Dr V. K. Ting as one of his chief advisers. Early in the summer of 1926 he appointed Dr Ting to be Director of the Ports of Shanghai and Woosung, nominally under himself as Director-General, but actually with almost complete liberty of action, especially in the reform of abuses and in the settlement of important pending questions with the authorities of the International Settlement. His appointment was heartily welcomed not only by responsible Chinese merchants and industrialists and by Chinese reformers and patriots of all Con schools except those of the Bolshevik type, but also by those foreigners who were alive to the realities of the political situation in China. He is a 'British returned student,' having been educated at Cambridge and Glasgow. A man of wide culture, he speaks English, French, and German fluently and has a highly-trained scientific mind which has already proved itself capable of dealing successfully with political problems. Moreover, he is a man of unblemished personal reputation; and though he is animated by an almost fiery zeal for the full emancipation of China from every trace of foreign superintendence and control, he is fully conscious that however desirable it may be that China should be recognised by the Western Powers as equal to themselves in status and independence, still more important is it that she should prove by her actions that such recognition is deserved. This is where the main difference lies between himself and that section of fanatics which-for the present at least-seems to dominate the so-called Cantonese party. For that party will not condescend even to discuss the question of whether China is or is not fitted to assume the full rights and responsibilities of a modern civilised State. These fanatics demand the immediate and unconditional cancellation of the treaties because they are incompatible with China's sovereign rights'; they seem to regard it as an impertinence if they are asked about the duties which will devolve upon her when the sovereign rights have been successfully vindicated.

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The fall of Marshal Sun Ch'uan-fang (assuming that such is the result of the present movements in the Yangtse Valley) will probably necessitate the retirement of Dr V. T. Ting from the political life into which nothing but a disinterested patriotism induced him to enter. It is to be hoped that such retirement will only be temporary; for assuredly it is the presence of men of his type among the leaders of Young China that make it impossible for some of us, even in these days of chaos and gloom, to despair of the future of the Chinese Republic.

Returning to the subject of the Chinese Bolsheviks and their activities, a few words regarding the leader of that party may not be out of place. He is an able young ex-professor of the Peking National University named Ch'ên Tu-hsiu. He was one of the leaders of a group of young intellectuals who during the Great War founded a periodical known as 'Hsin Ch'ing Nien' (New Youth'), which soon became the organ of 'advanced' thinkers in politics, ethics, social science, and literature. After a few years, this periodical fell under the suspicion of the Peking authorities, and Ch'ên Tu-hsiu became a marked man. He was arrested on a charge of distributing dangerous literature, and lodged in a gaol from which his friends had grave fears, for some time, that he would never escape alive. On his release he left Peking for the more congenial environment of South China, and for some years past has lived in Canton and in Shanghai. Just after his release from imprisonment, he caused great satisfaction in Christian missionary circles by publishing an article in Hsin Ch'ing Nien' in which he manifested an extremely sympathetic interest in Christianity. This article was translated into English and published in missionary journals, and stress was laid on the important influence exercised by Mr Ch'ên over a large section of the student body. The article caused great surprise among those of his Chinese associates who knew that he had long been iconoclastic with respect to the old religious and ethical systems of China, but had never suspected that he was seriously interested in Christianity. One of his closest friends, who had been his colleague on the professorial staff of the National University, explained the matter in conversation with me, on the theory that Mr Ch'ên's mind had been

temporarily affected by the cruelties and suspense of his long imprisonment, and that the article did not m represent the views which he held when in his normal thi state. Whether this was so or not, Mr Ch'ên seems to I have allowed Christianity to drift out of his sphere of

interest, and he now devotes his time exclusively (so m I am informed) to the furtherance of the cause of Communism. It was about May 1922, that he founded, at Canton, the Young Man's Communist Party of China.'

About a year ago a group of Communist students in Peking effected a raid on the offices of the 'Ch'ên Pao'-a non-Bolshevik student organ-in order to wreak vengeance upon it for the anti-Bolshevik utterances of its editorial columns. They succeeded in burning down the building and inflicting upon the proprietors of the newspaper losses estimated at $20,000. A short time after this episode, Mr Ch'ên's friend and former colleague, just mentioned, visited him at Shanghai and expressed regret that the Communists should perpetrate or signify their approval of an act which showed that while claiming full freedom of speech for themselves they denied it to those who happened to hold political or economic opinions different from their own. Mr Ch'ên listened to his friend with indignant surprise. 'Do you mean to pretend,' he said, 'that the students were not fully justified in burning the offices of the "Ch'ên Pao"?' Here spoke the true Bolshevik, for whom liberty of action, thought, and speech belongs to the Bolshevik party alone, and for whom crimes are not crimes provided they advance the cause of Bolshevism.

Bolshevik intrigue is rife in China, it is unscrupulous, and it is definitely anti-British. Bolshevism, as already pointed out, has allied itself with the national movement, and there is a real danger that the movement will pass completely under the control of Bolshevik agents, in which case it may cease to be truly national and patriotic in its aims and gradually become a mere instrument for the furtherance of Russian designs in the Far East. All this must be granted. Nevertheless, it is not true to say that the national movement was Bolshevik in origin, and the oft-repeated assertion that the Chinese would never have thought of demanding the revision of the

unequal treaties' if Russian agents had not put the idea into their heads, is demonstrably false.

If any one questions the accuracy of this view, he may be recommended to turn to the pages of a book which was published as long ago as 1901. Its title is 'These from the Land of Sinim,' and its author-Sir Robert Hart-was a man whose knowledge of and sympathy with China will be denied by none. The papers contained in the book were all written during the months immediately following the relief of the Legations after the 'Boxer' rising. The first was written during August 1900 (the Allied troops entered Peking in July), the second in September, the third and fourth in November, the last in December. The dates are important, because they show that at a time when the world was ringing with the grim tidings of Boxer atrocities, when the Chinese were held in such low repute in the scale of civilisation that a European potentate could direct his avenging army to give no quarter to the Chinese barbarians when it had met and vanquished them, there was at least one distinguished British subject who had passed through all the dangers and hardships of the siege and yet never allowed his clear vision of the underlying causes of the anti-foreign outbreak to be dimmed by those mists of hate, contempt, or misunderstanding that rose from the contact between a proud and humiliated China and a forceful and unsympathetic West.

Let us first observe what the great Inspector-General of Customs said about the Boxers themselves. Instead of joining in the chorus of voices that denounced them as wild and superstitious savages, actuated by a blind and murderous hatred against everything of Western origin, Hart finds that though they were ignorant and misguided they were real patriots. That the Boxer Association, he says, 'was patriotic in its origin and justifiable in much that it aimed at, cannot be questioned and cannot be too much insisted on.' Sir Robert was by no means blind to the crimes of the Boxers. He speaks of the 'fiendish cruelty' with which they and their military colleagues and mandarin patrons massacred foreign missionaries and native Christians, and says that this is 'a stain on the national history that can never