mintang agitators have seized on with notable success in order to unite the masses in a common protest. The so-called 'unequal treaties' which seventy-odd years ago gave to foreigners the privileged status referred to above are a much exploited factor in the Nationalist campaign. There are Chinese who will unblushingly attribute all of China's ills to these international agreements. There are foreigners who will assert with marked emphasis and some warmth that the treaties have nothing to do with the case. It hardly need be suggested that the truth lies somewhere between these two extremes. There is plenty that is wrong with China for which no foreign treaty can be held responsible. But it is also true that times have changed since the mid-nineteenth century, and that permeating the whole Chinese psychology, giving point to every accusation against the foreigner, there is now a deeprooted resentment that the struggling nation should not be master in its own domain. It is a fact that the treaties play an important part in determining Chinese opinion, and neither the fact nor the opinion is likely to change merely because we choose to ignore it. The situation among the masses is this. Almost every Chinese has been told that these treaties were forcibly imposed on China for the benefit of foreign Powers. And for the vast majority, too ignorant to understand the complications involved, who know only that they and their country have 'eaten bitterness' for the past fifteen years or more, it is sufficient to be told that this miserable national condition is a direct result of the unequal treaties. Absurd as it may seem, there is just enough truth in this position to justify it in the eyes of an unscrupulous minority whose chief interest lies in rousing China's dumb millions to political consciousness. VOL. 139 - NO.6 E Such is the basis of the popular support given to the anti-imperialist movement. Every nation having unequal treaty relations with China - this still includes America - is regarded as imperialistic. 'Down with Imperialism' and 'Down with the Foreigners' are slogans peculiarly fitted to express the negatives of patriotism to unlearned masses who find this the easiest way to express their pent-up feelings. These phrases just suit their emotional state, while Chinese radicals and Russian advisers, eager to produce a classconscious union of farmers and laborers, have in them a rallying cry both simple and appealing. Turning from the ignorant masses to the sober opinion of educated Nationalist officialdom, we find an equally unequivocal position. Eugene Chen refers to the treaties as a 'system of invisible conquest in the form of international control.' 'Chinese nationalism,' he says, 'demands back the independence of China. Our terms are cancellation of the unequal treaties on which the régime of foreign imperialism in China is based.' Chiang Kai-shek states the case with soldierly directness: 'We shall have equality, and any treaties which do not give us that equality with other nations of the world shall cease to exist as far as we are concerned.' Through the clash of rival interests in China to-day it is indeed difficult to discern any fundamental truth. But beneath the catchwords of 'communism' on the one hand and 'imperialism' on the other the immediate tendencies of the conflicting forces are fairly apparent. British, Americans, and Japanese, with property interests at stake, think in terms of what they possess and want to hold. Russia, whose abandonment of her treaty rights in China has constituted one of her chief claims to Nationalist good will, thinks in terms of what she has not and wants to obtain. The former labor under the psychological disadvantage of appearing to defend a relic of the old régime, while the latter, with everything to gain and nothing to lose, has the psychological advantage of appearing to support the new. This distinction is a most important one. Both foreign groups are working for their own interests. But whereas Russia is doing it through the medium of the Nationalist movement, England, America, and Japan appear to have been doing it through the medium of that very treaty system which the Nationalist Government is so determined to alter. Viewed in this light, it is not difficult to understand either the success of the Russians or the measurable failure of the Powers. For, despite conciliatory gestures of recent months on the part of the latter, the root of the trouble remains. And, until a mutually satisfactory agreement is reached on the whole treaty question, foreign enterprise in China will remain at best a stalemate. There are those who wish to see foreign business and foreign missions reinstated by force of arms. Even granting such a policy to be possible, it would be possible only in centres within range of foreign guns - namely, the coastal cities and those along the Yangtze Valley. And this would mark only the first step. Reinstatement proper depends not only on the foreigner but also on the Chinese. Strikes and boycotts have proved effective in the past as Japan and Britain have learned to their cost - and labor unions could and probably would so obstruct the process of trade as to make persistence under such conditions more costly than withdrawal. There are those who want intervention in order to save China from the Bolsheviki. To persons who mean by this the saving of China for British or American business it might be suggested that a possible method for competing with Bolshevist enterprise would be to adopt the policy of enlightened self-interest which the Bolsheviki themselves have found so successful. To those who mean the saving of China for the Chinese it might be pointed out that the millions who swarm within China's house at present are in no mood to be set in order by the West. Any attempt at the exercise of an international police power, however benevolent, might well produce or strengthen Bolshevism in China, as it did nearly a decade ago in Russia, more surely than any other means. If the Chinese are to kill the Bolshevist ogre, they will probably have to do most of the killing themselves. The end of the Peking régime looms nearer, and with it the end of the old treaty system. Transition there certainly will be - a transition attended by extensive loss to foreigners and infinitely more to those Chinese of all classes who have long depended on the stability of foreign institutions. Many foreign concerns will have to pull themselves up by the roots and start afresh. But although the new order carried up from the South may hold in store much temporary misery and loss for Chinese and foreigner alike, the facts are that it has already arrived, that nothing now can permanently check its development, and that in its sensitiveness to the spirit of foreign diplomacy, as in its inward and fundamental vitality, it is something quite different from any Chinese régime we have ever known before. To realize these facts, in all their implications, is the beginning of wisdom in dealing with China to-day. THE CONTRIBUTORS' CLUB THE POSITIVE NEGATIVES OF THE telephone rang. I answered it. 'I don't suppose,' said the familiar voice of a favorite friend, 'that you could go to lunch with me, and the matinée.' 'Why don't you?' I asked. 'Don't you want me to?' 'Wh - wh-a-a-t?' gasped the favorite friend's familiar voice. 'If you suppose,' I said, in my most didactic tone, 'that I cannot accept your invitation, why did you extend it?' After a pause my friend burst into a peal of laughter, followed by 'Because I am a New Englander, and don't want to commit myself - to having really asked you, in case you said you could not go. Maybe it is a sort of selfdefense, and maybe it -' I accepted and we went, but the matinée did not interest me nearly so much as did my recollections of other New Englanders and their negatives, or, if not positive negations, - if there can be such a thing, - at least noncommittalisms. 'You can never get a definite answer out of a New Englander,' one of General Stark's descendants said to me, the first year I came to this delightful corner of our country. We were driving home from her farm, the car laden with apples. We stopped at the home of her laundress; yard overflowing with children, but no sign of apple trees, or of any other crop. 'I thought you might like a basket of apples,' said the great-granddaughter of the General, as a worn little woman came to the gate. 'Would you?' 'Wa-al,' drawled the woman, 'ef I'm to have any apples, I do-ant know but as na-ow's as good a time as any ter have apples.' The basket of apples was handed out, into a phalanx of uplifted arms, and as we drove off my hostess made that remark: 'You can never get a definite answer out of a New Englander.' That evening my sister-in-law said to me, 'Let's have a party. Go telephone so-and-so and so-and-so. That's a dear.' I did as I was bid, and each guest made answer in words to this effect: 'Yes, I think I can come.' 'Will you let me know, definitely, when you know if you can?' was my invariable query. 'But I think I can.' That was all. Puzzled, I reported to my sister. 'Oh,' said she, 'isn't that lovely?' - and began at once to prepare her menu, counting guests. 'You can't prepare until you know definitely,' I suggested. 'Oh, they'll all come,' she tossed my suggestion aside. She did not even understand it. Next - I wanted to make an appointment with my dentist. In his outer office I made known my desire to his attendant. She opened his engagement book, ran down the pages, paused, pencil poised above a blank space. 'On Tuesday, at 2.30, I think he can see you,' and began to write my name. 'Will you telephone me, when you are certain?' I suggested. 'Oh, I think 2.30 Tuesday is all right'; and, with no uncertainty, she inscribed my name in the fair white space. Once, in the editorial offices of a Boston newspaper, I outlined a series of stories I wished to write. 'I think they will be very acceptable,' said the austere editor. That thought was permissible. I knew enough, even then, of editorial uncertainties to appreciate this. But when a letter came from that editor it baffled me. 'It is possible,' wrote the gentleman, 'that we shall publish the first of these stories in the magazine section of our next issue, June 5. And I see no reason, now, why we should not be able to use one every Sunday for a while, at least.' Such a letter, to-day, would carry with it not a shadow of doubt. But in that early season of my residence in New England it brought naught but sorrow. 'Why didn't he return the stories, if he's so uncertain about them, and let me try to place them elsewhere?' I wailed to a near-by friend. He stretched forth his hand. I gave him the letter. He read it and, with puzzled look, glanced from the written words to me. 'What's uncertain about that?' he demanded. And he was right, for the stories appeared as the editor had implied they might, on Sunday, June the fifth, and on every other Sunday for a long, long while. Recently another friend, and this time from my own New Orleans, was in town and we lunched together. 'What will you have?' he asked, consulting the menu. 'Scrod, I think.' I tried to tell him what scrod was. 'All right. I'll have it,' said he. 'Now - have you decided?' 'I think I'll have scrod,' I answered quickly, and skipped from food to talk of home. The waiter came and, with pad and pencil, stood beside my friend. 'Scrod for me,' said he, 'and salad, and - have you made up your mind yet,' - his tone implied large tolerance of woman's unstable mentality, 'what you want to eat?' 'I told you - scrod.' I was irritated at his stupidity. You see, I have lived five years in Boston. IT IS MORE BLESSED TO GIVE READING a letter in a current periodical asking for donations of old magazines for poor intellectuals in Europe, I was reminded by some imp of mischief of the high stacks of old magazines in my attic, and with an unwonted generosity I got them down. It required a huge roll of heavy brown paper, a ball of twine, and hours of patient toil to wrap them all into neat, secure packages. At the post office my enthusiasm received its first cooling. The postage was horribly high, and I began to wish my magazines were back in the attic, patiently awaiting the junkman. But, refusing to stop there, I cheerfully paid out the postage for every magazine. Homeward bound, I tried to take my mind off my slim purse by thinking of the many people, starving for reading material, that my magazines would make happy, and of the nice letters of appreciation with which they would surely reward me. How they would enjoy some of the stories in the Atlantic and Century, and how their views of Americans as grasping money-lenders would be modified by the liberal Nation and New Republic! A warm feeling of satisfaction for a good deed well done came over me. The letters came, simply hordes of them, dozens of letters for every magazine. And in each letter there came, not the charmingly phrased laudations or clever criticisms of American letters I had so expected, but only profuse thanks, and always a request for something, from medicine to pianos. The recipients of my magazines must have thought me only a lesser Henry Ford. Some came with stories that were truly pathetic. One poor Vienna workingman, Gustav by name, wanted me to help him support his too large household, consisting of himself, his wife, his mother, his mother-in-law, an extremely aged grandmother, a brother disabled in the war, five children of another brother killed in the war, and seven children of his own. He also wanted some medicine, a tonic for the grandmother, - he allowed me to use my judgment about the kind, - and a hot-water bottle. One woman, an artist, sent me some of her portraits of famous Americans, done in pen and ink, to sell among my friends. In this group she included Henry Ford, Douglas Fairbanks, and Jackie Coogan, as well as J. P. Morgan, William Allen White, and most of our presidents. Of the poorer classes many asked for help to come to America as immigrants, either through the loan of money or by exerting my influence to get them past the immigration authorities. Having less influence even than money, I had to refuse them outright. One letter came from an inventor, who wanted me to finance the manufacturing of an 'electrical lamp' he had invented, which was destined to revolutionize the electric lighting industry. The tone of his letter implied that he was really offering a rare privilege rather than making a request, and he was sure that in this 'land of wealth and kindness' I could easily find enough investors to give his lamp the necessary financial backing. Almost all the letters were written in good English, although the stilted style seemed foreign to our tongue. The phraseology was too polite to sound sincere. Both in politeness and in ingenuity one supposedly Austrian composer surpassed all the others. He began by sending me a letter in fine English asking for a piano - or, rather, enough money to buy a piano. He would repay me by composing a waltz and naming it for me. This honor was not to be scorned. He was no amateur, he said, but a composer of note, who had already won high honors. He enclosed newspaper clippings, - I am sure they were faked, - to prove his high place among European composers. He also sent me his picture; he had the face and bearing of an artist. To substantiate his promise he already sent me the first part of the waltz that was to bear my name. Although it gave promise of much beauty and I was delighted by the prospect of having a famous Austrian composer name a composition for me, I still felt I should have to forgo the honor. I had no money to give him a piano, and should have had to send him mine. I was not quite sure the exchange would be equitable. Anyway, how could I appreciate the waltz if I had no piano on which to play it? I accordingly wrote to him that I was unable to comply with his request, expressing the deepest regret. But he was not to be dismissed that easily, and came back with the whole waltz, a beautiful thing, although I cannot vouch for its originality. The notes were written with a remarkable accuracy and the whole piece was decorated in a way that made me think of the embellishing of manuscripts in the Middle Ages. He must have put hours and hours of time simply into preparing this sheet of music, not considering the time it had taken to compose it, if he had composed it. And, best of all, he had kept his promise in naming it for me. There was my name in the title, charmingly handlettered in gold. In the accompanying |