UNHAPPY CHINA

Northern Advocate, 27 August 1913, Page 5

UNHAPPY CHINA

A BLUE BOOK REPORT

MUTINIES, MURDER, AND LOOTING.

STAGGERING HUMAN MISERY,

(By Telegraph-Press Assn.-Copyright)

LONDON, Aug. 26

A Blue Book dealing with China up to November, 1912, emphasises the bitterness of the Nationalist, or Sun-Vat-Sen party against Yuan-Shi-Kai (the President), and their equal hostility to foreigners as shown in their persistent agitation against the foreign loan and their attempt to collect native subscription instead. The Blue Book shows that the failure of the attempt was partly due to patriotic subscribers contributing bad paper money issued during the revolution, and now not negotiable. The President, Yuan-Shi-Kai, estimated that a million pounds sterling is unpaid. Unemployed soldiery were left armed after the revolution, and became distributed .throughout China, with the result that a long series of mutinies, murders, and looting took place. The report of the senior British naval officers at Canton declares that Chinese patrols were invariably met steaming as fast as possible away from any disturbances on the West River. The " Daily Chronicle," commenting on the Blue Book, remarks that the sum total of human misery in China since the fall of the Manchus is staggering. Although the Chinese are a clever race, the Blue Book shows that they are so steeped in the tradition of dishonesty and individualism as to be almost incapable of organising their chaos, and no substitute has been found for the national unifying principle of the religious respect formerly paid to Manchus.