14 MAY 1927, Page 12

Correspondence

A LETTER FROM PEKING. [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—A fortnight ago the Peking outlook was decidedly

black. Reports were coming in daily of a rapid Cantonese advance up the Pukow-Tientsin railway, missionary refugees from Shansi and further west brought stories of a coming invasion of the capital by Feng Yu-hsiang, while we heard from Honan that the Fengtien forces were being pushed back in their fight against Chin Yun-ao and his turncoat army, Estimates of the length of time that Chang Tso-lin was likely to hold Peking fell as low as three weeks or a month.

As no one could foresee the effects of a Fengtien withdrawal and a Nationalist occupation, foreigners started to pack their boxes and the American colony—the largest in Peking excepting the Japanese—began an organized evacuation of their wives and families. The three vast American or Anglo- American institutions in and round Peking—the Ching Hua and Yenching Universities near to the Summer Palace and the Peking Union Medical College, built less than ten years ago with Rockefeller Trust money—made plans to meet the crisis, the two Universities by withdrawing their foreign staff and the P.U.M.C. (as it is known throughout the country) by speeding up its arrangements for turning itself into a purely Chinese establishment. The cynics declare, by the way, that within three months of conversion the magnificent buildings and equipment, representing seven million dollars American currency, will assuredly be barracks.

In the course of the fortnight there has been a profound

change. For reasons at which we still can only guess, the Nationalist army advancing against Tientsin has retreated back to the Yangtze, and Nanking is daily expected to fall again into the hands of the North. Chin Yun-ao and his mutineers are reported " down and out," and the I', Yu-hsiang scare is discounted by the military experts, declare that he has no munitions and must wait at least months until the Urga road from Russia across Mong, has been freed of its winter snows.

This breathing space—even if it proves no more undeniably comforting. Whether, on other than per,,,e grounds, the change is one to be welcomed is difficult decide. The staunchest believers in the Kuomintang hal had their faith shaken by the Nanking atrocities, the anarth at Hankow and the indications generally that the National movement is being swallowed up in Bolshevism with it concomitants of mob-rule and terrorism. The better derma appear to be finding themselves more and more submerged, the people are profiting nothing and the only visible fruit which the movement at present is bearing is rabid anti.

foreignism. On the other side of the picture the militant regime remains as hopeless as ever. One can see no signs

of any genuine intention on Chang Tso-lin's part of redeeming

the reputation which damns the name of the Northern military parties. No attempt has been made in the course

of three months to set up even the semblance of a properly constituted government, and the farce of a dummy Cabinet, the members of which resign on an average once a fortnight.

drags wearily on, disappointing the hopes of the Manchurian partisans who thought that the Marshal, having got contrul of Peking, would show the world that administrative reform was not a Kuomintang monopoly. The choice between the Northern and Southern evils, leaving foreign interests aside, has become a matter of taste.

The event of last week was the raid by Fengtien soldier on the compound of the Chinese Eastern Railway adjoinin the Soviet Embassy. The " scoop," it appears, provides absolute proof—if such proof is needed—of the assistanre received from official Russian quarters by Feng Yu-hsiang and the Southern Nationalistsin their war against the North as wen as in their anti-British campaign. Though the raid involwl the violation of part of the Embassy premises, to wit the military attaché's office, the mouth of the Moscow Govern- ment will be stopped by the publication of the document,. There is, however, considerable local feeling that th invasion of foreign property in the diplomatic quarter bar set up a precedent which may in certain circumstances rebound on the head of the other foreign Legations, by whose consent the troops entered the gates of the Quarter which had been closed to Chinese soldiers since the Boxer Rebellion.

The pro-Nationalist papers are taking up the cry that the outrages on foreigners are unproven, that nothing has been established against the Nationalist troops, and that the foreign casualties were mainly the victims of their own gunboats' fire- represented as a brutal bombardment of a defenceless city and

credited with the destruction of two thousand Chinese lives.

The British public will doubtless be as well informed as we in Peking of the reports and evidence of the Englishmen on the

spot. To any logical mind the deliberate attack on foreigners

by Cantonese troops and the protective purpose and nature of the barrage laid by the naval guns on Socony Hill must

one would suppose, be matters beyond dispute. Making owl

allowance for the tendency shared by us all to reject evidence when it goes against us and to accept it when in our favour, one might yet think that even a Chinese editor would feel bound to concede the broad facts of the Nanking case. That he does nothing of the sort is probably due not so much to

perversity nor to the blinding spirit of hatred inspired, however unjustly, by the Shanghai, Shameen and Wanhsien incidents but to a lack of a sense of truth for truth's sake.

To return for a moment to our Chinese editors, one fee/3 bound to pay a tribute of respect to their courage in certain instances. Not long ago a Peking newspaper editor who had

dared to denounce the behaviour of the Northern militarists

was hauled from his bed and shot before dawn on the execution ground near the Temple of Heaven. Another editor, of the mine political persuasion, migrated recently to Hankow and, after seeing the local conditions, wrote a series of articles condemning Communism. We heard last week that the Nationalist Government have _treated him in the same waY that the Northerneis treated his colleague.—I.am, Sir, ete., April 10th, 1927.

YouR PEKING CORRESPONDENT.