Evening Post. TUESDAY, MARCH 15, 1927. PATRIOTISM—OLD AND NEW

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 62, 15 March 1927, Page 8

Evening Post. TUESDAY, MARCH 15, 1927. PATRIOTISM—OLD AND NEW

One small incident in the history of Britain's quarrels with China might surely be exempted even by the sternest of moralists f rom the ep,ldf* d «gusting and disgraceful" which Mr. Lansbury, M.P.,* has comprehensively applied to the whole record. The incident, which apparently during the campaign of idGO, was reported as follows by the 'Times"':— Some Seiks and a private of the Lufts (or East Kent Regiment), havine remained behind with the grog-carts ■fell into the hands of the Chinese. On the next morning they wero brought before the authorities and commanded to perform the "Ko tou." The Seiks obeyed, but Moyse, tho English soldier declaring that he would not prostrate himself before any Chinaman alive was immediately knocked upon the head and his body thrown upon a dung-The-incident was commemorated by Sir Francis Hastings Doyle in one of the most stirring utterances of British patriotism. Last night, among his fellow roughs, He jested, quaffed, and swore; A drunken private of the Buffs, Who never looked before. To-day, beneath the foeman's frown, He stands in Elgin's place, Ambassador from Britain's crown And type of all her race. -Visions of the distant hop-fields of his native Kent, of its "bright leagues of cherry-blossom," and of the soft, grey smoke eddying above his father's door are represented as appearing before the eyes of this unofficial ambassador but without weakening his resolve to stand upright while "dusky Indians whine and kneel," and the poet moralises as follows:— Vain, mightiest fleets of iron framed; Vain those all-shattering 'guns; Unless proud England keep, untamed, The strong heart of her sons. So, let his name through Europe ring— A man of mean estate, ' Who died, as firm as Sparta's King, Because his soul was great. Mr. George Lansbury also may have a great soul, but he shows it in a different way. Nobody would think of comparing him with the Spartan leader at Thermopylae or with the private of the Buffs who passed straight from the grog-carts to an equal glory. Nor would anybody suspect him of any sympathy with the painfully "militaristic" moral of Doyle's ballad. Henley declares the .object of his "Lyra Heroica," the "anthology for boys" from which our quotations are taken, to be— To sot forth, as only art can, the beauty and tho joy of living, the beauty and the blessedness of death, the glory of battle and adventure, the nobility of devotion—to a cause, an ideal, a passion even—the dignity of resistance, tho sacred quality of patriotism. With all these things, or nearly all of them, Mr. Lansbury and his friends arc out of tune, and it is by way of contrast—"a simile of dissimilitude"—that we have ventured to bring the contribution of Private Moyse to the service of the Empire with that rendered by Mr. Lansbury on the extraordinary occasion reported yesterday. Not since some of the leading Socialists coyly put on their red ties—if indeed they ventured so far—in honour of the sainted memory of Lenin and repaired to the Soviet Headquarters in London for the purpose has a more remarkable ceremonial taken place in the most tolerant of all cities than that in which Mr. Lansbury played a leading part on Sunday. The occasion was the second anniversary of Sun Vat Sen's death, and the place was "the stately rooms of the Chinese Legation at Portland Place." We are told that a hundred representatives of Chinese democracy, "keen intellectual students, as well as cooks and sailors in rough clothes," attended in honour of the occasion, "reclined on gilded chairs, smoked cigarettes continually," and listened to the eloquence of Mr. Lansbury and others. The auspices of the meeting were not the least remarkable thing about it. Though it was held in the rooms of the Chinese Legation, the Chinese Minister did not attend. The meeting was really run by the Southern revolutionaries who are at war with his Government, the Kuomintang simply allowing tho Legation officials ~.to conduct it in trust "for the future masters—the Cantonese Government." Like the old lady who always bowed to the name of Satan because "politeness costs nothing, and you never know," the Chinese Legation in London shows the, wisdom of a complete impartiality. Mr. Lansbury's leaning is doubtless towards Canton as decidedly redder than Pekin, though at a pinch he could probably stand either the red or the yellow—anything but the Red, White, and Blue. A silent tribute was paid to a large picture of Sun Vat Sen by bowing three times, and then he was privileged to break the silence to the following effect:— Mr. Lansbury declared that our record in. China for the past half-cen-tury was so disgusting and disgraceful that he felt honoured that any Britishers wero allowed to attend. He regretted' that British workers had not been strong enough to stop tho dispatch of troops to China. It is indeed a far cry from the

patriotism of Private Moyse to Mr. Lansbury's. The one, with no official or unofficial obligation of any kind except that of his British pride, sacrifices his life "rather than bow the knee to any Chinaman alive. The other, a British M.P., proudly kowtows three times to the portrait of a Chinese revolutionary of a very poor type, and rises to slander his country in a speech which was far more "disgusting and disgraceful" than the record which he laid to its charge, to declare that he felt "honoured" that any Britishers were "allowed" to take part in such a performance, and to regret that British workers were unable to prevent the dispatch of the troops which alone can save his countrymen in Shanghai, their women and children, from horrors unspeakable at the hands of contending miscreants. The Chinese Reds have certainly found a fit eulogist in the'man who sees in the incomparable services of Sir Robert Hart and. Sir Francis Aglen no reason for qualifying his denunciation of his country's record in China as "disgusting and disgraceful"!