EUGENE CHEN.

Shannon News, 5 April 1927, Page 3

EUGENE CHEN.

A PERSONAL SKETCH. Mr. Rowland B. Evans, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, says: "In the corner of the compartment of the train iu which I was travelling that left Moscow for Vladivostoek, some years ago, sat a thoughtful looking Chinese, seeming, for all the world, except for his Asiatic face, like a cultured. Europaan, his dress and demeanour being indistinguishable from that of a Mayfair beau. He was none other than Mr. Eugene Chen, now the Cantonese Foreign Minister, and leader of the Southern China Nationalist movement, which has for its avowed object the elimination of all foreign control in China. The journey occupied, in all, ten days and nights; so thai. I was enabled to get an unusally good insight into the character of Mr. Chen. "Physically Mr. Chen is of diminutive proportions. His appearance and dress generally indicated ■• a love of order and neatness in all that he did. Those two tests of a sartorial expert—a trouser-crease and a tie always in position, Mr. Chen could easily pass. Indeed, the only Asiatic touch about his garb was the thimble he sometimes 'wore on the little finger of his right hand. This small thimble is the hallmaik of gentility, and proclsims the wearer as a man unused to physical labcur. "Mr. Chen's intellect is of a very high order. Born in Trinidad, a British colony, he has passed more than one-fourth of his life under the British flag, having made an almost exhaustive study of British politics, history, literature, and commerce. Tinevolution of British polities Mr. Chen found entraneingly interesting, and h? juotcs our greatest poets and authors with an eas3 born of familiarity with his subject. Notwithstanding tlu> somewhat anti-British nature of his recent attitude, Mr. Chen is a keen admirer of the British character, and told me that China would welcome an expansion of trade relations Avith the British Enmire. The one feature of British Imperialism, however, that ha? eaten into hL fibres is what he himself calls the imposition of a regime of international control, which he debit * to Britain. "The fact that Mr. Chen's command of English is as good as that of a cultured Briton will not place him at any disadvantage in conference with re nresentatives of the British Government. He knows the West as well as he knows the East, and he expresses his views in a forcible, definite manner, leaving no doubt in the mind of his hearer as to what he means. Mr. i Ohcn has evidently aroused the Dragon, lin the Celestial Empire: whither he j will direct the monster will be watched with the greatest interest. '' ,