CO129-501-2 Chinese situation- Boxer indemnity 5-2-1927 - 14-12-1927 — Page 101

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was murdered when the Southern Forces recently occupied that City. I mention this to emphasize the fact that

Nanking, the ancient capital of China and one of its

most important educational centres, has now ceased to

be a place in which a self-respecting college or

school could be conducted. This is true of Hankow

al so. How long these conditions will continue it is

impossible to say.

5.

Ten years ago in May 1917, the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce drew the attention of this

Government to the fact that British educational efforts

in China were small by comparison with those of the United States of America and pointed to the large number of Chinese officials at Canton, especially the

juniors who had been educated in America. The Chamber

urged the need of counteracting other nationalistic

efforts in a sphere in which British influence should

predominate. Your attention has doubtless been also

directed to what Sir Auckland Geddes is reported to have said at the recent annual meeting of the Ashford Division of the Conservative and Constitutional

Association. Sir Auckland did not suggest that the American Government was responsible for any concious anti-British propaganda in China, but he remarked on

the large mumber of Chinese who had been to America and absorbed American ideas. All these young men repeat in China some of the shibboleths they have heard in America about British tyranny and British Imperialism, and thus become leaders of anti-British movements.

Into movements of this sort had come, Sir Auckland

pointed out, the influence from Moscow "finding the ground tilled and prepared, so that it could swing the

whole