SCENE CHANGES.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 108, 10 May 1927, Page 7

SCENE CHANGES.

POSITION IN CHINA. Overthrow of Communist Element. BRITAIN AND SEPARATIONS. (British Official Wireless.) (Received 12.30 p.m.) RUGBY, May 9. Sir Austen Chamberlain, Foreign Secretary, made a statement in the House of Commons on the present state of affairs regarding the Nanking outrages. He said the replies of Mr. Eugene Chen, Nationalist Foreign Minister, to the identic Notes of Great Britain, United States, Japan, France and Italy, which demanded punishment of the offenders, apology, and compensation, were unsatisfactory in substance and detail. "Serious and immediate issues were shirked and irrevelant matter and the usual Nationalist propaganda were introduced," he said "The hve Governments were alreadv discussing the further action to be taken in view of the unsatisfactory nature of Air. Chen's reply, when events took place in the Yangtse region which have entirely changed the position. "When the outrages occurred and even when the Powers' Notes were presented, China, south of the Yangtse, was apparently united under a Nationalist Government whose seat was in Hankow. There was, therefore, a Government which was responsible for the outrages and which could be made responsible for reparations. "Within four days after the date of Mr. Chen's reply this united Government in South China no longer existed, and Mr. Chen and his Notes represented little more than himself and his personal opinions. He no longer spoke for Nationalist China or for the Kuomintang party. "The Nanking affair had precipitated a long-impending 6plit within the Nationalist ranks. The looting of foreign property at Nanking and the shooting of foreigners were the culmination of a continued policy of agitation, rapine, terrorism and murder. The tools of this policy were the unpaid soldiery of the Nationalist armies and the mobs of great cities, but its organisation and driving force were borrowed directly or indirectly from this International. This policy had failed. Defence Force Present. - 'Tt had been unable to seize Shanghai owing to the protective presence of the defence force, and by March it was becoming directed against the Nationalist Generalissimo, Chiang Kai-shek, of whose power the Communists were jealous. "The organised side of the Nanking outrages appears to have been an attempt to embroil Chiang Kai-shek with the Foreign Powers. "The outrages at Nanking have already reacted in China in a dramatic, and, to their authors, unwelcome manner. Not two months ago it seemed as if the Southern party and the Nationalist armies would sweep China from south to north. "Nanking has already checked this victorious career, if it has not wrecked it altogether. It has split the Communist Wing from the Kuomintang party, and the most important of all, it has deeply discredited the Communist and their foreign advisers in the eyes of all China. "In view of this momentous development, the question of punishment for Nanking outrages has assumed an entirely new aspect. "The Hankow Government, which was responsible for the outrages, no longer controls Nanking. All the offenders, the Communist agitators, have been punished by the Chinese Nationalists themselves. , with a severeness and effectiveness of i which no foreign Power was capable, in Canton and in other towns. "Extremist organisations have been broken up, and their leaders executed. , "The Nationalist Government at Hankow has lost its dominating position, and is at present little more than a shadow ■ of the name."