Can China Last Out?

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 24, 29 January 1938, Page 3 (Supplement)

Can China Last Out?

Chinese are the most peace--1 loving people in the world or in history. Their religion, whether Buddhism, Taoism or Confucian ethics, is one of peace. Their psychology is non-combative. They will engage neither in mass nor individual conflict unless forced to it. They are, in the main, peace at any price, nor do they hold it humiliation to concede a good deal to an aggressor for the sake of that peace. The Chinese are also shrewd and calculating realists. They know the folly of fighting, and far better than the Weet they understand that nothing is ever achieved by it and all things lost. They would scoff at old Horace's silly dictum about how "sweet" it is to die for one's country, if they had ever heard it. They attach little significance to the muchabused word "patriotism," especially when that word connotes mass slaughter of other human beings. In brief, the Chinese ask only to be let alone that they may pursue their arduous labours and turn to account their incredible capacity for industry. That is all they ask and it is not much. Yet since the inception of the so-called republic it is a good deal more than has been granted them. The republican Government has at no time been able to police effectively more than a small part of the country, and in the rest the rapacious and venal militarist and war lord has had his fell way, exactly as through uncounted centuries. For in the old days if he paid his tribute to the Imperial Government at Peking he was left pretty much alone. It might be money, but more likely it was opium or rice or grain, or perhaps live stock. But the provincial war lord was practically king in his own district. It was, in effect, a feudal system and it lasted for thousands of years. It still endures and up to now has prevented any real unification of Chinese, political, social or economic. In the endeavour to end thie ages-old system the Nanking Government has spent millions of dollars and thousands

other actually unrelated groups, and here again, study of their dentition emphasises this dissimilarity. When the scientific importance of the etudy of ehellfish dentition was first realised a German specialist became most enthusiastic and sought to get the living animal of many rare shelU in order to establish their true systematic relation■hips. He tried in particular to get the animals of two apparently closely related West African species, and finally, in desperation, offered a considerable reward to a native who promptly provided specimens containing animals. The results startled the specialist, for he found that although the shells seemed identical the teeth were entirely different in the two specimens. He published his remarkable results, and it was not until many years later that he realised that he had been hoaxed, for the native had extracted the animals from a common and totally unrelated species and rammed them in the shells of the species sought by the specialist. A Pre*e report last year from Brisbane described how a young man, on a pleasure cruise to Hayman Island, died as the result of a sting received from a shellfish. While he was examining a beautifully marked cone shell a spike came out and pierced his hand. Although he felt no pain at the time a short while afterwards he complained that his eyesight was failing, and that he had a burning sensation round the mouth. He soon became unconscious and died while being conveyed to the hospital. Certain of the tropical cone shells have long been known to possess venomous qualities, and this has been traced definitely to their highly specialised radulae. Teeth are few—arranged in pairs. Eeeh is fitted with a sharp barb and a poison duct. Visitors to the tropics should beware of these cone shells, particularly ae their beautiful colouring cannot fail to attract the collector's eye. However, living ones arp not likely to be found exposed on a beach, it being necessary to search for them by looking under ledges, and also by turning over blocks of coral where they are usually hidden away in crevices. Fortunately, we have none of these ahellfieh in New Zealand waters.

8y... Marc T. Greene

of lire*. K baa eent ermiea against one war lord or another, and to resist them he has pressed the peace-loving and hardworking peasantry of vast countrysides into his service. He has paid these nothing and taken their harvest* and all their possessions. Presently he has either been defeated by the Nanking German-trained troops, or else, as is more likely, he has sold out to the Government, receiving a large sum on his promise to cease military activities and leave the country, temporarily at least. The price lie ha* received has varied from eight or ten thousand pounds to —as is rumoured—more than half a million in the recent ease of Chang Hsuel-liang after Tie had "kidnapped" the Chinese generalissimo, Chiang Kai-shek (pronounced Chong K'-«heh). After the provincial war lord naa I>een defeated or bought off he turns hi* army loose to shift for iteelf. It therefore has to live off the country, forcibly in most cases, and therefore comes into the classification of "Communist." Starved and desperate, these men have, in effect, turned bandit, pillaging in every direction and dealing ruthlessly with whomever opposes. They have had no choice. It hae been that or starve. And if they have hoisted the Red flag it has been be.eause some actual Communist, possibly a Russian, has appeared to lead them anil to persuade them that nnder that flag alone lies their salvation. That and the venality of the Nanking Government, of which everyone who knows anything about the inside of China is perfectly well acquainted, explains to a large extent the chaos that has engulfed tormented China for these past twenty years. Many keen and unbiased observers have long since concluded that because of the aforesaid feudalism, the inability of the Central Government to overcome it because of its own venality and factional discord and lack of true leadership, and the hopelessness of the endeavour to unify the socially and politically divided country, the only solution warn international aid and supervision.

Is It Freedom Or Virtual Vassalage? Many have thought tils snouM take the form of a sort of international mandate, not by any means a "partition" of China or anything like it, as • -was broadly favoured after the Boxer Rebellion, merely a foreign control of the country's finances and economics and, for the whole country, just such an international policing as maintains, under normal conditions, good order in the Shanghai International Settlement and French Concession. More than one student of the position has believed and still believes that only along some such line can China survive. That is to say. survive in the sense of saving its millions of peasantry from virtual vassalage to a foreign ' Power, either Japan or Russia. For if the, peasantry is not saved, and thoir con-1 dition has grown steadily worse ever! since the farcical "Republic" came into existence, China can no more survive than Soviet Russia could survive if the peasantry starved or became economic chattels of another Power. The present position, however the "undeclared" war may result or may have resulted by the time this is in print, goes far to strengthen the arguments of the proponents of international aid and supervision for China. Under such an arrangement she would not be in the helpless position she is now. Neither Japan nor anybody else would have dared or would ever dare to make such an unprovoked, unannounced and blatantly imperialistic assault upon her as is in progress at this moment. Under such an arrangement China would survive. Nor would her national integrity, except in the vaguest principle, be at all impaired. The time might come, very likely would come, when even that principle would be satisfied, when, under the guidance of the Powers, China would, politically speaking, come to adult

stature when now she is only at the stage of very precocious and irresponsible youth. Then she might become the world Power that the intelligence and ability of many of her people furnish every reason to hope for. Her peril now is rery great, greater indeed than at' any time in her long history. It is all very well to argue that she is like a great sponge, that however hard anyone hits the impression will not long remain, and that she always has absorbed whatever and whomever has temporarily enshackled her. The person who does not know China ie wont to say that you cannot conquer such a country. Even now any number are say. ing it. How can you vanquish 400,000,000 people scattered over such, a Yaet territory ? That was relatively true until our noble "civilisation" had developed, as one of its masterly achievements, a hundred new and unforeseen methods of destroying humanity. Moreover, what with the aforesaid long and widespread feudal conflict and the selfishness and incompetency of the Nanking Government in dealing with it, millions and millions of Chinese have starved, been overwhelmed with floods or driven into banditry, or "Communism," in the last decade. The survivors, impoverished, weakened and hopeless, are in no condition to withstand *. sustained assault by a modern military Power. That China has survived in the past and retained a measure of national integrity through so much by no means declares that she can do so under the present pressure.

Germans Gave China An Army The present central Government came into power in China last in 1927. Its programme was, in the main, economic reconstruction, that is to say, salvation of the peasantry, political and social unification and the development of a military force capable of policing the embroiled and divided country. That wae an ambitious programme, aa anyone who knows China will agree. But because they believed in the sincerity of the new Government and because they pitied the starving millions of China, the Powers generally gave that Government moral, and a good deal of material, support. The Germane came and trained a new Chinese army, which is the one and only reason why a good resistance has been made to the assaults of the Japanese in the present war. But neither German instructors nor anyone else can alter Chinese psychology. It is the hoary old simile of being able to lead a horse to water without inducing him to drink. True, you may persuade him to take a swallow or two, after which he will become adamant and back farther and farther away. The Chinese are not fighter*. And. as I venture to predict now, in the heat of the Asiatic war when" they seem to be making a good showing, they will not stick it very long. While they outnumber the foe four or five to one in any particular place they will keep fighting. But let the odds approach the even or anywhere near it, let the outnumbered enemy be euddenly reinforced by vast hordes of fresh troops, and nothing is more certain than that the Chinese will become panic-stricken in a moment. They are not and never can be mad* into what are called "shock troops."' Throughout Chinese history when two provincial armies have faced one another on anything like even terms "arrangements" have almost invariably been J made to terminate or to avoid conflict. j Keenly understanding Chinese peychi ology the Japanese are inaugurating a j reign of terror by ruthlessly slaughterI ing non-combatants in every direction, i knowing that, whereas among Europeans the reaction to this would be an added determination and a stronger fighting spirit, among the Chinese it will be the exact contrary. That is the reason for the brutal bombing of unfortified, unprotected and civiliau-filled districts where the act can have no possible military objective. The mass hysteria to which the Chinese are most easily driven is tlie hysteria of panic, a panic based on fear. Individually, the Chinese ie far from lacking in courage. In the mass he iau easy victim of the hysteria of fea:\ Naturally, if there existed in the world to-day any semblance of the thing -wa used to mean, or thought we meant, by the term "civilisation," the unbelievable brutality of Japanese acts in Chin i would not be tolerated for an instant by the rest of the world. But we have lapsed into a kind of Nietzscheian eta'.c of contempt for sympathy and derision for the qualities of mercy* and pity. >"<> longer do we feel & desire to come to the aid of the inexcusably assailed or to protect the defenceless. Or if we rl.> we neither say nor do anything about it. We make formal protests, and we accept diplomatic apologies from tho>;' who, like the Japanese at the presc-n: moment, are laughing in their sleeves with the utmost contempt for us. Will Starvation Follow The War? When the thing is over, whether to morrow or not for another year, urn.-! j of the survivors in China, and. incident I ally, a good many of those in Japan :-> I will face starvation. Epidemics >vi i ravage the country in the wake of t!; conqueror and take tragic toll of a weal: enetl and under-nourished people. Th vast interior will be ravaged by bandit and outlaws, and the soil everywherwill be rich for the sowing of the seeds' of the most violent form of Communisui In the light of all that, how can China survive this latest and greatest blow this worst of all ignominies, this brutn assault which the world regards wit': an indifference and an inaction as eor«t as it is shocking? And make no mis take about it, Japan will exact a heav; i\>ll from the conquered for her ov losses and suffering in this, one of ti. most unjustified and inhuman acts <. military aggression in human histor. . Will the world prevent her from takin : such toll as she thinks fit, even to nal, of the vanquished country? Judgi-i.-from that world's criminal indifferen • to what has happened in Abyssinia, i what is going on in Spain, and, in sh ;r----to everything else where Us pock-t not directly assailed, there is no realtor anybody to expect it will make a' move. If, indeed, Japan is so uii'.vi as to menace on any considerable se;i the material interests of the West i China there may be something more tha formal diplomatic "protests" cereniom ously conveyed bv one tall-hatted, frockcoated person "to another si ™ , j ? a t r < £ arraved and delivered over a ca Pj( nien t and "a cigarette to the * ceom Z£?Bui lof amiable chate about * be * Cbh>» as to expecting a"* on gro"» d * against the ruthJesa b ™ v tber e *** ?„ of common ■-• that quality still «*» ten , the world? ;