THE CHINESE SITUATION.

Putaruru Press, Volume VI, Issue 245, 12 July 1928, Page 3

THE CHINESE SITUATION.

ITS . PRIMARY CAUSE. Bolshevism Only Secondary. Interviewed recently by a representative of the Matamata Record, the Rev. A. L. Miller, M.A., of the Canton Mission, expressed his emphatic opinion that the turmoil in China today is due to the machinations of the Bolsheviks. It would seem, however, that Bolshevistic propaganda and agitation generally are only secondary causes, accentuating already existing ills and discontent. One who has a very profound.grasp and penetrating insight into problems of modern international concern goes confidently beyond Bolshevism for the causes of Chinese unrest. Thus writes M. Francesco Nitti, a former Prime Minister of Italy, in that absorbingly interesting book, “ Bolshevism, Fascism and Democracy,” very ably translated by Margaret M. Green:—

“ As for the international activities of Bolshevism, in Europe and beyond, the vast schemes attributed to Soviet Russia a year or two ago were, for the most part, figments of the imagination of a few reactionary journalists,- mainly English. It may be true that Bolshevik agents stirred up revolt in China. But did not the wickedness of Europeans in China merit the deepest hostility from“the Chinese, and was it not bound, sooner or later, to bring about bloody conflicts? Chinese tendencies are at once nationalist and Communist. “ Nationalism is the outcome of the treacherous robbery and cruelty of 1 Europeans, who often enough committed horrible crimes, particularly at the time of the Boxer rising. The Chinese revolt is simply a response to the most barbarous form of cap-

italist exploitation ever known to 'man. “ The Chinese people are the most patient in the world, and the least addicted to violence. The practical philosophy of Confucius and Menicus, which has penetrated deep into the Chinese soul, is of all others the most pacific in its influence. If the Europeans and their armies of occupation had not indulged in countless excesses, if they had not always resorted to miserable intrigues to obtain concessions and exploit the economic situation, China would probably have offered no opposition to trade. “ But the most shameful part of the story was and is the methods of European capitalism in China. In those Chinese provinces where the anti-foreign agitation is most violent European capitalists have ruined more lives than the casualties in the Great War.

“ Not only adult workers but children too have been exploited in the most shameful manner, working fifteen and sixteen hours a day without a break and without holidays; and wages have been almost everywhere reduced to famine rates by the competition of the mass of poor workers. “ The fullest inquiries in England into the brutalities of manufacturers in the early days of industrialism pale by comparison with the awful spectacle of European capitalist actions in / China. “ Those who have invested their capital most profitably in China, and who cheerfully receive their dividends and pocket large profits year by year, complain of Bolshevik propaganda in China. But they do not consider that, if there has been Bolshevik propaganda, it found men’s minds disposed to hatred. They do not perceive that their immense profits drip with blood, and that the development by Europeans of textile industries, among others, is one of the darkest pages in the history of world industry.”