Shanghai
BY SIR FREDERICK WHYT1C.
ZHANG.HAl has long been one of the crucial points kJ where East and West meet. The foreigner in China has created in the International Settlement one of the greatest markets in Asia, and its security is ahnost in equal degree a foreign and a Chinese interest. For, even if we acknowledge . (as we must) that the foreign community has been slow, fatally slow, in recognizing the obligation to secure the co-operation of the Chinese in the administration of the city, the Chinese confess, (because they must) that the material benefit which they have gained from the . development of Shanghai, on the basis of a foreign guarantee Of security, is very great. At this moment of crisis, therefore, the controversy between Chinese and foreigner within the Settlement is no longer the major issue, for the very foundations of the Settlement's security arc. now threatened.- It is the
common interest of all to avert the danger. . . _
The threat conies from the general disorder of China. It has been inherent in the situation for many years ; but it has never been so perilous as it is to-day, because the measures hitherto taken to . encounter it, as in th,e British Shanghai Defence Force, of 1627, were not only adequate, but guided by a careful estimate of the political consequences which must follow military action. To tin Shanghai Defence Force five years ago was assigned s definite limited objective dictated by a clear fore-know- ledge of the probable results. This objective-L-naniely, the complete protection of Shanghai from the danger of being 'engulfed in Chinese Civil War—was .then reached with remarkably little fm ictiOn 'and almost nothing • but satisfactory political consequences. 'Me force had a sedative effect on the whole of the Yangtze Valley. In Japanese action in Mukden last autumn, as in Shanghai to-day, it is difficult, nay, it is impossible, for the 'detached mind to see any evidence of a like objective, limited to legitimate and attainable ends and designed beforehand with I cool estimate of all the risks involved. Therefore, while we must ascribe to the prevailing disorder in China the parent cause of the trouble, the spear-head of the threat to peace in the Far East is the action which Japan has taken to deal with it.
That being so, it is better to suspend judgement of the final solution and to take instant action to arrest or limit hostilities between the parties. A great international interest is at stake, with reverberations and repercussions stretching far beyond the political concerns of Nanking and of Tokyo, and the action taken last week by the Governments of Great Britain, France, America and Italy, shows that the opinion of the world is awake to the issues involved. Shanghai is the immediate centre of these issues ; but important as it is in itself, it is only a part of a greater problem involving such vital questions as the reconciliation of the conflicting rights of China and Japan, the Open Door in China, the future of the League of Nations in Asia, and the ultimate political destiny of China.
The immediate need in these critical days is to guarantee the security of Shanghai, a task of which the delicacies and complications must be evident to the attentive reader of recent telegrams from China. Even in peaceful times the daily problems of municipal administration are entangled in a web of difficulties arising from the extra-territorial rights of foreigners and the operation of Chinese Law for the Chinese within the Settlement. But, in a crisis; new and more formidable difficulties emerge. In the first place, each group of nationals, British, American, Japanese, &c., lives under its own law and looks to its own Consul for instructions ; but they all are subject to the municipal government of the Shanghai Municipal Council. There must therefore be complete cohesion between the whole Consular Body and the Council when swift and united action is needed. More- over, each body of troops (British, American, French, Italian and Japanese) is under its own national command ; and, with the best will in the world it must be difficult for Brigadier Fleming, acting as primus inter pares of the foreign commanders in Shanghai, to secure adequate co-ordination for the defence of the Settlement.
Assuming these difficulties solved—which, in view of the Japanese Admiral's action in Chapei, is - not the case—others even more formidable arise from the physical nature of Shanghai itself. The foreign area, comprising the International Settlement and the French Concession is a block of territory over twelve square miles in extent, based on the Whangpoo River and stretching several miles inland, which lies between the two Chinese cities of Chapei and Nantao. No natural feature divides these areas, which are as continuous and contiguous as Man- chester and. .Salford ,,or .Edinburgh. and Leith yet Rd separate are they as entities that unless your car has a Chinese licence, your driver cannot, or will not, chive you into the yard of the North Station which lies in the Chinese city of Chapei. Both the railway termini of Shanghai, the South and the North Stations, lie in Chinese territory, and recent telegrams have shown the critical importance of the North Station which, as the terminus of the Shanghai-Nanking Railway, is the major landward exit from the city to the interior. River communications fortunately keep contact with the outer world ; but those by land are liable to be cut at any moment and to create a shortage of supplies. And owing to the position of the North Station, hostile troops approaching the city can be brought almost to the heart of the whole urban area before they can be stopped.
That part of the Settlement in which the Japanese are most numerous, namely Hongkew, which is north of the Soochow Creek, lies cheek by jowl with Chapei. The direct route to Chapei from the principal landing stages on the river leads across it ; and short of making a wide detour from a point some miles down the river across cultivated land intersected by numerous little waterways, there is no way of approaching Chapei except through the Settlement. Thus the Japanese have been driven to something more than a technical breach of the essential neutrality of the Settlement and have broken its long- standing tradition of security. Having used the Hongkew area as their base of operations against Chapei, they have laid the whole foreign city open to Chinese counter- attack. The Chinese Mayor, who is also the garrison Commander, has openly expressed his reluctance to disturb the Settlement, but he is between the devil and the deep sea, the Japanese Admiral on one side and his own insubordinate and inflamed troops on the other. Even the best-disciplined regulars in the world would lose some of their cohesion in the melee of hand-to-hand fighting in narrow lanes and congested streets where every house shelters a sniper and your sense of direction even in daylight is soon confused. When troops are by nature undisciplined and provocation abundant, all obedience vanishes ; and so the Chinese Commander to-day is paralysed and the Japanese provoked to action which has shocked the world.
Thus all attempts to negotiate an effective armistice come to deadlock, but under a new and more temporate admiral the initiative, which still remains with Japan, may lead to better results. Events move too fast for comment to keep pace with them; but the situation, though in appearance desperate, is such that new opportunities for action by the mediators may arise at any moment. The cordiality of Anglo-American co-operation is one of the few redeeming features in a deplorable situation : and if the will of these two Powers be vigorously enough expressed, it may yet save the peace of the East and give the 'League a new opportunity to regain some of the ground lost last autumn.
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