Trouble in South China
The most mature and urbane of existing civilisations has somehow retained a streak of childishness whose occasional manifestations are embarrassing to all concerned ; and it is really China's enemies, .rather than Britain's who have most cause to rejoice at the former's failure to avert the recent display of ill-tempered irresponsibility over Kowloon. A dispute had been brewing for some time over the position of squatters, a large influx of whom into part of our leased territory on the mainland had created, because of the insanitary conditions of their mushroom settlement, a serious and growing threat to public health. The Hongkong authorities told the squatters that they must go, offering them alternative accommodation and plenty of time in_ which to make a move. The squatters, instigated by malcontents who were as anxious to make trouble for the Chinese Government as for the British and encouraged by a violent Press campaign, refused to go ; and when at last they had to be evicted there were disturbances in the course of which two agitators were arrested and a third man is said to have been fatally injured. The immediate sequel was an outbreak of organised mob-violence at Canton, where several hundred demonstrators attacked and burnt British property on the island of Shameen and roughly handled several members of the small British community ; intervention by the Cantonese authorities was so tardy as to suggest their connivance. A strong Foreign Office protest to Nanking has elicited an expression of regret from the Chinese Government. That Government, on its side, has with considerable effrontery claimed compensation in respect of the Kowloon squatters. Such a claim has neither legal nor moral basis, and can only be decisively rejected.
