PAWNS IN THE GAME?

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21612, 6 April 1932, Page 8

PAWNS IN THE GAME?

CHINA STUDENT MOVEMENT

SHANGHAI, March 24,

One of the enigmas of the present situation is: What has become of the strident movement? Less than two months ago more than 250,000 students were engaged in movements to prod the Government into taking a stronger attitude toward Japan. They were disrupting train services by seizing trains here and in Peiping and other cities in order to proceed to Nanking. In Nanking they wrecked the Foreign Ministry after assaulting Dr C. T. Wang, who was then Foreign Minister. In Shanghai they attacked the Kuomintang party headquarters, and virtually seized the City Hall of the Chinese section.

By tens of thousands they demanded arms and military training. They vociferously organised the “ Dare-to-Die Corps,” which has now disappeared and only one section of which actually penetrated into Manchuria, going as far as Chinchow, then returning southward and disbanding because of the excessive cold.

It was these student organisations which forced General Chiang Kai-shek’s resignation and virtually upset a Nanking Government of three years’ existence and which afterwards, in utter silence, saw General Chiang Kai-shek again the dominant figure, with Japan shelling and bombing a section of China’s largest city. Shrewd observers at the time of the student agitation, which attracted worldwide attention, surmised that the students were being cleverly used by political forces of which the youths were not cognisant. To-day the students are entirely quiescent, their leaders apparently in hiding, while the prophecies that the student movement would foster the birth of genuine nationalist patriotism are confounded.