TROUBLE AT CHANGSHA

Evening Star, Issue 19519, 29 March 1927, Page 5

TROUBLE AT CHANGSHA

EXTRAORDINARY DEMANDS

(British Official News.) Press Association—By Wireless—Copyright

RUGBY, March 27.

At Changsha a Cantonese authority has made various extraordinary demands ripen the British Consul in consequence of a trivial incident between two British bluejackets and a Chinese farmer.

Compensation is demanded for the Chinese farmer, who is alleged to have lost four teeth j but it is also demanded

that the British bluejackets shall ho handed-over to the Chinese authorities to be punished with tho utmost rigor of the law. It is further declared that tho British Consul is by international law merely a foreigner, and that the right of search and arrest over Consular premises will bo exercised, while British gunboats will be treated as ordinary merchant vessels, and, as such, liable to search, arrest, or expulsion. The naval authorities are investigating tho incident between the bluejackets and the Chinese farmer, and Mr Toich, the British representative at Hankow, has made strong representations to Mr Chen, the Cantonese Foreign Minister, against the extraordinary communication of his official at Changsha. It is probable that the British Consul will go on board a British gunboat in order to be protected from possible further indignity and insult, ami that other British subjects will accompany him. CHANGE GF OPINION MISSIONARIES REALISE SITUATION. NEW YORK, March 27. Tho Shanghai correspondent of the New York ‘Times’ writes; “The missionaries who until Thursday scoffed at tho Consular advice to withdraw from the Yangtse Valley.are now hastening to evacuate the whole of that country, leaving behind tho work and hopes of half a century, with little prospect of returning unless gunboats are employed to reopen the country as in 190 U. The change of opinion is amazing. Only a fortnight ago the United Protestant Association appointed delegations to England and America to explain the Nationalist movement in a favorable light; but now that women as well as men have been maltreated their attitude has changed. The question which is asked is: Will America with Britain re-establish her trading and teaching privileges by force? And it is being answered in the negative. Hundreds of the Nationals of these countries are therefore hastening homeward with .Shanghai as only a temporary stopping place. Thus it can be said that so far as tho Americans in China are concerned there has been a sharp awakening to She actual situation.”