The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. MONDAY, APRIL 18, 1927. CANTON'S REPLY.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 90, 18 April 1927, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

MONDAY, APRIL 18, 1927. CANTON'S REPLY.

For the cause that lack* assistance, For the torong that need* reeiatanee, For the future in the distance, And the good that ice can do.

While there is not the least probability that the Nationalist reply to the Powers'

demand for satisfaction and reparation will involve China in hostilities with Europe or America, China's best friends must deplore the tone and substance of Mr. Eugene Chen's

dispatch. The character of this extraordinary document is well summarised by the "Daily Telegraph' , as expressing neither contrition nor indignation for the grave outrages perpetrated at banking. Apparently the Nationalist leaders, recognising that they have no adequate defence against the charges brought by the Powers, are endeavouring to ''bluff' the world by a show of outraged innocence and an assumption of self-confidence which they may yet find misplaced.

Mr. Chen professes to believe that he has completely disposed of; the charge that the murders and outrages at Nanking Mere deliberately organised and directed by the Nationalists. His method is simplicity itself; he ignores the immense mass of testimony offered, and assures the world of the innocence of the Cantonese. This combination of "bad faith and impudence," as the "Daily Telegraph" puts it, is not likely to produce much impression outside Nationalist circles. But Mi\ Chen has entirely outdone this effort in his reference to the bombardment of the '•defenceless" city of Nanking by the warships of the Powers. This plea must surely mark the culminating point of the hypocrisy and mendacity that characterise the Cantonese Xote throughout.

For in making this protest Mr. Chen, with amazing effrontery, omits or distorts every fact of any essential importance. Nanking is a city which possesses a large arsenal, and therefore a great store of arms. It was in the occupation of a Nationalist army, well supplied with artillery. That artillery actually fired on the hill where the hapless foreign refugees were sheltering. And Mr. Chen, in face of all these things, has the sublime impudence to accuse the Powers of breaking the principles of international law by defending their kinsfolk menaced with outrage or slaughter by the Cantonese soldiery. Apparently, in Mr. Chen's eyes, the only line of conduct permissible to ''foreign devils" in China is that they shall submissively offer their throats to the knife.

We need not enlarge further upon this precious dispatch, with its cumbersome irrelevancies about "unequal treaties" and t lie humiliation of China in the past by foreign Powers. What has been at issue ever since Shanghai Avas first threatened is simply the safety of foreign residents in China, and the means to be taken by the Powers to protect them; and Mr. Chen's laborious dissertation on China's rights is not to the point just now. That the Powers will be able to assert their rights effectively against the Cantonese, without making war on China, we do not for a moment doubt. Meantime it is much to be regretted that both in Britain and in this country those voluble pacifists Avho believe in the cause of every country or nation but their own are doing their best to represent the efforts of the Powers to protect their nationals as a deliberate attempt to precipitate war against China. The climax of this misrepresentation was surely reached last week by a spokesman of the "Hands Off China" party here, who actually compared Britain's attempt to rescue the Europeans of Shanghai to the German invasion of Belgium, with all its monstrous accompaniments of outrage and bloodshed. It is not necessary to produce evidence to confute such statements as this, but in the name of public decency we have a right to protest against such distortion of fact and truth.