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[This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Government.]
CHINA
[ March 20.]
SECTION 2.
CONFIDENTIAL.
[F 1156/583/10]
No. 1.
Sir B. Alston to the Marqueas Curzon of Kedleston.-(Received March 20.) (No. 75.) My Lord,
Peking, February 4, 1922. WITH reference to my despatch No. 757 of the 28th December on the subject of anti-foreign feeling in Szechuan, information since received from His Majesty's consul- general at Chengtu is such as to make prominent the intimate relationship existing between students of Christian and other educational institutions, their teachers, members of the Young Men's Christian Association, &c., and the various associations and guilds in Szechuan, such as the Tung I Hui (or Society of the Common Aim and Servants' Guild and Labour Self-Government Society, which are permeated with anti-foreign feeling and the desire to overturn authority, such as it is, in Szechuan. The missionaries and the Young Men's Christian Association secretary find themselves powerless to eradicate or check these political movements associated with institutions which they theoretically control, and the authorities appear equally incapable of taking effective steps.
I have the honour to enclose a copy of a despatch from His Majesty's consul-general at Chengtu, dated the 24th December, ou the subject of students' processions, which took place on the 21st of that month for the purpose of arousing the people in the matter of China's treatment at the Washington Conference. On that day students of practically all the Chengtu schools, whether missionary or Government, and of the missionary Union University," absented themselves from work and formed processions through the streets. Selected students entered the teashops and harangued the people, stating that the Chinese were now to become slaves to the Powers, and urging their audiences to combine against foreign aggression. At the same time pamphlets were distributed. One issued by the Middle School of the Missionary University was to the effect that the Washington Conference had decided to hand over Manchuria and Mongolia to Japan and Tibet to Great Britain. A pamphlet issued by the Government Agricultural College said: Who would have thought when the conference started that
Powers who deserve to be absolutely exterminated, root and branch, should avail themselves of this opportunity to discuss the partition of our territory, the control of our finances."
In the opinion of His Majesty's consul-general the above-named and other political societies, whose effect, if not their avowed aim, is disorder, are on the point of combining under the Tung I Hui, or Union Society. (N.B.-This is a different society from that mentioned above and in the enclosure to my despatch No. 757, although the romanised name is identic.) This society is stated by His Majesty's consul-general to be probably in close touch with Hsiung K'o-wu, formerly Military Governor of Szechuan, who is using it for his own ends.
In other provinces besides Szechuan the failure of the Washington Conference to obtain the extravagant results hoped for by many Chinese gives the cue of the moment to student agitation. Nothing is said by the agitators about the gain which China is actually obtaining from the conference. Attention is concentrated on the fact that China will not yet be mistress in her own house, and her hope of recovering lost rights with the assistance of Powers other than Japan is declared to have been disappointed owing to those Powers having taken the side of Japan against China. With this attitude it is of interest to compare the statement made, according to a Reuter telegram from London dated the 20th January, by the Chinese Chargé d'Affaires at a meeting of the Union of Chinese Students, that "China is in the position of a joint at a sacrificial feast with its carvers pretending to be actuated by the greatest goodwill towards the animal furnishing the chief dish.”
In Shensi, now ruled by a Christian military governor named Feng Yi-lisiang, I learn through letters from the British Postal Commissioner in the provincial capital that agitation similar to that in Szechuan is on foot, and that it has the support of the military governor. Processions were formed by the students at Hsi-an on the same day as at Chengtu, bodies of them marching through the streets and shouting "Down with the Japanese and foreigners! "Drive them out of the province !'
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