Evening Post. FRIDAY, JANUARY 7, 1927. CHAOS AND ANARCHY

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 5, 7 January 1927, Page 6

Evening Post. FRIDAY, JANUARY 7, 1927. CHAOS AND ANARCHY

• Two of the outstanding events in a year of unrest, strife, and disorder were the quiet resolution with which the British people faced in the General Strike one of the severest ordeals that ever confronted a nation and the prolongation of the miners' strike till it petered out in sheer exhaustion six months later. During all those months of impoverishment and of peril, of misery and of passion, not a single shot was fired, there was no appreciable increase of crime, and the. wholesale paralysis of industry did not prevent the most fundamental of the State's activities —the preservation of law and order —from proceeding with "business as usual." The tranquillity maintained throughout both these ordeals, the self-restraint displayed by the strikers no less than by the majority of the nation, excited the admiration of the world. During the General Strike in particular it was recognised even by the nations most disposed to envy and to carp lhat Britain was fighting the battle, of civilisation, and that if her calmness and" her courage.were not equal to the task the fight was hopeless. The testimony of a great American which had been quoted in "The Times" at the beginning of the Great War was felt to be equally apt when it was applied by the "Morning Post" to' the General Strike. It was of England's attitude to the much less formidable peril of the Crimean .War that Emerson wrote as follows:—

• I sets her not dispirited, not weak but 111 "men? bf in E that she has seen dark days before; indeed, with a kind ol instinct that she sees a little better in -a cloudy day, and that in storm of battle and calamity she has a secret vigour and a-pulse like a cannon. I see her in her old age not decrepit but young, ancl still daring to believe in her power of endurance ana expansion Seeing this, I say, "All hail I Mother of nations, Mother of- heroes, with strength still equal to the time; still wise to entertain and swift to execute the policy which the mind and heart of mankind requires in the present hour, and thus only hospitable to the foreigner, and truly a home to the thoughtful and generous,- who are born in the soil So be it! So let it be!

The grim news from China which shows that the chaos and the anarchy of that most distressful country are rapidly approaching a tragic climax naturally carries the mind to thissplendid tribute. It can, of course, only be applied to the British position in China with a difference, and it would be better if" the difference were not so wide. If 'any sacrifice on the part of, the British nation could.avert the tragedy which is threatened, we may be sure that it would be unflinchingly made in the spirit eulogised by Emerson, but whatever a more adventurous policy might have achieved months ago, the possibility of maintaining Britain's treaty rights in Hankow seems' to be now out of the question. How can the British concession be maintained in a city more than 600 miles from the coast, with a. population of 800,----000, who, under Bolshevik inspiration, seem to be all stampeded into a blind anti-British fury?- And after mob violence has triumphed in Hankow how can the Red tide be prevented from sweeping down the Yangtse Valley and involving British rights and interests in Shanghai in, the same ruin? If these things were being done by a Government it might be possible to fight, and it would certainly be possible to negotiate. But China has no Government, and,to contend, either in argument or in any other way, with a nation of 400;000,000 people which has gone stark mad is beyond the unaided power of even the greatest of other nations. It would be as easy to reason with an earthquake. There is, therefore, little that the British nation as a whole can do in the presence of an unprecedented calamity beyond watching its apparently inevitable denouement. It is to its tiny vanguard in the city of Hankow that the call has come to show the great qualities of the race, and marvellous indeed lias been their response. A force of 250 men —the strength of a single military company—has had to protect the British residents against the attacks of an infuriated mob,'incited by anti-foreign agitators and obviously connived at, if not encouraged, by the revolutionary forces. And it was a condition of the defence, at any rate against the first attacks, that on no account must any of'the assailants be killed or even wounded! Violence was to be a monopoly of the mob. We were accordingly told yesterday, in the excellent report cabled by Sir Percival Phillips to the "Evening News," how two sailors or marines who had lost their steel helmets were beaten on the head and perhaps fatally injured, how another who had fallen and lost his rifle was stabbed with his own bayonet, and how an officer was struck in the face with stones. And all this without the firing of a shot fn reply t or retaliation of any 'kind p&e* lhaa. apparently; tbes

measured force that might be legitimate in a football scrummage. Sir Percival Phillips surely understates the position when he says: The British sailors and marines' behaviour during this afternoon's ordeal, which" called for supremo patience under the severest provocation, is the finest exhibition of self-control I havo seen.

Has anybody ever either seen the like or read of it in history or in fiction? The nearest parallel we can recall was when the Turks were making for the Dardanelles in September, 1922, and finding a British force in the way climbed through its wire entanglements and examined its rifles, if we remember rightly, presumably to.see if they were loaded! The stoicism and the restraint displayed at Chanak have been repeated at • Hankow under much more exasperating conditions, and it may safely be conjectured that .the world has never seen the like. The performance of Leonidas and his 300 Spartans was a poor thing in comparison. This wretched Chinese business has provided few' opportunities for glory, but those that have offered have not been missed. The gallantry of the Cockchafer and the Despatch at Wanhsicn has been likened to that of Zeebrugge, and ; the bloodless triumph at Hankow has a grandeur which "is probably'unique.