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southern mainland, and small, scattered, foreign communities were subjected to insult and outrage. At Hankow, on June 11th, a large crowd of Chinese stoned the police of the British Concession, tore up seats on the Bund, destroyed Japanese shops and attacked the shopkeepers, and attempted to rush the Volunteer armoury, in defence of which fire had to be opened on the rioters, after the Fire Brigade had played their hoses on the mob for twenty minutes. Mob outrages also occurred in quick succession at Amoy, Chefoo, Chenkiang, Chiukiang, Hainan, Hoihow, Kiukiang, Nanking, Ningpo, Peking, Shanghai, Swatow, and Wuchow. In some of these cases the British forces did not resist; and in all cases they refrained from action until the very last minute.
There is indisputable evidence that Bolsheviks have taken an active part in these disturbances. In 1919 Bolshe- vism was little more than a legend in any part of China: in 1925 it had become a creed in the South. Yourin Pogodin. Bourrier, Karakhan and Borodin did their work well.
The Soviet has attained considerable political success by disturbing the minds of the younger and more vocal classes of China, the students, who rush their way through college in an atmosphere of strikes and revolutions, and nourish their chauvinism on ill-digested ideas of civic rights and liberties. Persons have taken the place of principles.
Borodin has laboured so successfully in Canton that it might almost be described as a replica of Soviet Moscow. The British now find themselves in an astonishing position, not through the boycott, but because certain sinister influences, while pretending to strive for “ right" and "justice," are directing a campaign of calumny and vindictiveness. Neither right nor justice spring from a doctrine of hate, which only tends to reduce life to an embittering experience. The boycott is the oldest war China has ever waged against the
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foreigner, and the boats must ride at anchor, swinging idly with the tides, until the ban is raised. But the small foreign community in the Crown Colony of Hongkong has become the object of a subtle hostility that vents itself in ways that are eminently crude and unfair. The pamphlet entitled June Twenty-Third is one of several examples.
This pamphlet contains the report of the Commission appointed by the Canton Government to investigate the Shameen "massacre." Copies of the pamphlet can be had for the asking from the Secretary of the Y.M.C.A., Canton. It may be remarked in passing that the activities of the Y.M.C.A. in China are entirely different from Association activities in other countries. Ever since the foreign secretaries began to make over control to Chinese committees, the latter have become more and more concerned with political education and propaganda. In the Commissioners' Report the follow- ing definite assertions are made :-
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(a) The Shameen authorities fortified the Concession with sandbags and barbed-wire entanglements because the authorities were so nervous that they had almost reached a stage of panic." The implication is that the firing started from Shameen as an outburst of hys- teria, or it may be that Shameen was fortified against the retribution that might follow a preconceived attack on a prospective parade of demonstrators. (b) While the student demonstrators were passing the West bridge, the British in Shameen suddenly opened fire, killing and wounding many in the procession. (c) If the shooting had started from the Chinese side, the unarmed students and others would have been able to escape; and if the attack from Shameen had not been sudden the wounded would have escaped, or, at least, the wounds would have been in the back instead of in the left side.