CHEN'S LAST WORDS

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 29, 4 February 1927, Page 9

CHEN'S LAST WORDS

PERIL OF WAR NEUROSIS

BOUQUET TQ LABOUR PARTY

LONDON, 3rd February. At the conclusion of ,his statement, already .published; in reply to Mr. O'Malley, the British representative, breaking off negotiations in connection with the Hankow Concession, Eugene Chen, Nationalist Minister, added: "I sought to arrange a settlement at Hankow, apart from the general issues of Chinese Nationalism and British Imporialism, which should satisfy British sentiment and preserve Nationalist self-respect. Such a settlement cau bo reached immediately if only there is a cessation of the war atmosphere and war neurosis due to the menacing concentration at Shanghai' of the nwst powerful forces Britain has massed in China since the Opium "Warn. If the object of the warlike measures is merely to guard against British lives and property being jeopardised by the Chinese seizure of the foreign settlement in Shanghai, there ought no longer to be anxiety on .that point or need of forces in view of the statement I mado to Mr. O'Malley. '"If the massing of forces is an expression of the type of governing mind that feeds on the bodies of slaughtered men, it is to be feared the disablement of British trade may have to continue until British labour is ontrusted with the task of arresting the British decline in the Far East, substituting statesmanship, peace, and productive work for Tory Imperialism, war, and Byzantine glory."