The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo WEDNESDAY, MAY 11, 1927. MORE LIGHT ON CHINA.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 109, 11 May 1927, Page 6

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

WEDNESDAY, MAY 11, 1927. MORE LIGHT ON CHINA.

For the cause that lack* astietanoe, For the wrong that need* rctietanoe. For the future in the distance, And the good that we can do.

For the past few days there has been no news of any importance from China, and the speech just delivered by the British Foreign Minister in the House of Commons helps to explain the most recent developments of the situation in the Far East. What most people have been anxious to learn is whether the Powers intend to take any further steps to enforce their claims for reparation against the Nationalists for the Nanking outrages. The answer, as Sir A. Chamberlain would say, is in the negative. The replies received from Mr. Chen, the so-called Foreign Minister of the Cantonese Government, were wholly unsatisfactory, but within a week after this dispatch was received that Government had ceased to exist. As there is nobody in power who can be regarded as officially responsible for what happened at Nanking, our Foreign Office has decided that however justifiable it might be to enforce penalties for these outrages, it is not expedient to attempt it under existing circumstances. No doubt this decision will appear to many of our readers humiliating and futile. Are the Powers content to allow their nationals to be robbed or outraged or murdered in China without attempting to secure punishment for the offenders 1 The answer given by Sir A. Chamberlain covers all the most important aspects of the situation. If there were a responsible Government in China the Powers could easily bring pressure to bear upon it to enforce some kind of punishment on the criminals. But as there is no such central authority, and as the "de facto" Government which was virtually responsible for the Nanking outrages exists no longer, any attempt by the Powers to exact reparation would mean a combined attack, upon China. But the Powers certainly do not contemplate any act of war against China. On the contrary, as Sir A. Chamberlain is careful to remind us, the Powers in general, and Britain in particular, are most anxious to conciliate the Chinese and to assist them in finding their way through the bewildering maze of the civil war. But if and when a Chinese Government acknowledged by the whole country does finally emerge from this chaos, then the Powers will present their claims to it, and will be prepared to exact compensation and reparation. The larger portion of the Minister's speech deals with the division in the Kuomintang party between the Communists and the moderate section of the Nationalists. The "Reds" who directed affairs from Hankow, .and were primarily responsible for the Nanking outrages, have been practically wiped out, and "the Communist agitators have been punished by the Chinese Nationalists themselves with a severity and effectiveness of which no foreign Power is capable." Sir A. Chamberlain points out, however, that this split in the Nationalist ranks renders the future of China even more ambiguous than before.