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244
THE CHINA CRITIC
March 13, 1930
March 13, 1930
THE CHINA CRITIC
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245
liquidation as an act of good faith. The report further states that the suggestion has been put forward that the Ministry should try to obtain financial assistance by ureans of foreign loans, but it has been its policy to avoid even negotiations in that direction until there is assurance that the terms and conditions which could be offered to prospective foreign purchasers of bonds would be such as could be accepted and yet which would not im- peril China's financial integrity. This sound policy of the Ministry is no doubt responsible for its ability to float the large amount of internal loans during the past few years. The report states during the past fiscal year $80,000,000 was borrowed for current expenditures from a country already exhausted by civil war, banditry and economic maladjustment. This, together with the suc- cessful operation of the government Central Bank, in- dicates the confidence of the people in the National Government.
Lastly, it may be mentioned that the emphasis the Minister places on an efficient civil service is highly
This Yuan
welcome. Civil service in practically every Government institution, he declares, has suffered as a result of the military activities and all had to be content with what- ever personnel was immediately available. The import- ant task of installing an efficient civil service system has been the object of the National Government which re- cently organized the Examination Yuan. will deal with the work of determining the standards of staff qualifications and treatment in the various Gov- ernment institutions. It must be stated that the Min- istry of Finance has always been doing its utmost to help the organization of an efficient civil service. Unlike Government employees in the Peking days who had their salaries months and even years in arrears, those in Nan- king, we understand, have been promptly paid their full wages, It is well known that an efficient civil service will be the only lasting remedy for centuries of cor- ruption among Government officials, but as the Min- istry realizes, an efficient civil service requires a well paid as well as well selected personnel.
American Courts, British Prisons and Extrality
Were it not for the existence of extraterritoriality, we have reason to believe, few foreigners would find pleasure in condemning Chinese affairs. Political scan- dals in China would probably be little known or at least advertised abroad as political scandals are scarcely known to the Chinese public. But the approximately ninety years of the extraterritorial regime and the recent Chi nese demand to have it abolished have developed among the treaty-port foreigners the pastime of knocking China. The political-minded among them have regarded them selves as judges as to what shall be done and shall not be done in this country, apparently giving little thought to the old saying that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Cancel extraterritoriality and they will probably devote their time to the more profit- able work of adapting themselves to conditions in a country where they have chosen to reside and carry ou their business, instead of wasting their ink and energy in finding fault with Chinese politics.
One of our readers in London recently sent us some newspaper clippings which are worth the attention of those Shanghailanders whose conviction is of the die hard tinge and who for many years have refused to budge an inch on the extraterritoriality question. If politics be their life interest it seems logical that they should return home and interest their fellow countrymen in some reforms rather than stay here demanding re- forms from the Chinese. In the London Evening News of February 3, 1930 there appeared an interview with Mr. Daniel Hopkin, Socialist M. P. for Carmarthen, upon his return to England after a short stay in the United States. Mr. Hopkin was reported to have said the fol- lowing:-
"A very funny thing happened to me in the Capitol at Washington. I was being entertained. While I was talking to my host, a man approached and said he learn-
ed that my friend was going to give a dinner for a Britisher.
If you want any stuff, I have got plenty' he remarked.
"He was a bootlegger touting for orders and in the Capitol at that."
But, of course, bootlegging is illegal but not exactly illegitimate from the popular viewpoint! So, it is not a question of ability to enforce the law. Perhaps it is unreadiness. Yet, during the stay of Mr. Hopkin, ac- cording to the Evening News, an extra 3,000,000 pounds was voted to cope with the liquor business.
•
"I could hardly believe my eyes when first started to read the daily papers there," Mr. Hopkin was further reported to have remarked. "A campaign was being carried on in which it was being stated that magistrates were taking money on far too wholesale a scale for letting off prisoners. They gave the names of the magistrates and everything else that would be absolutely impossible in this country.
man was
"Apparently the suggestion was that a accused of a crime for which the punishment would be two years imprisonment. The magistrate would suggest bail for 40 pounds. He would then divide with the counsel for the accused a respectable bribe.
"The man would not come up for trial when the case was heard and would merely forfeit his 40 pounds."
We have these scandals and worse in China, possibly, And in China extraterritoriality must be maintained at all costs, with foreigners all the time lecturing the Chi- nese as to what constitutes a decent judiciary and the foreign governments insisting that recommendations of the Extraterritoriality Commission of 1926 must be car-
ried out to their satisfaction before the Chinese courts will approach the western or Anglo-Saxon "standard!"
It is a geeer coincidence that the same paper on the same day carried a story of the suicide of Spiers who was sentenced by a British court to ten years of penal servitude with an addition of 15 strokes of the cat-o'- nine-tails. While being taken to the "triangle" where the latter punishment was to be administered, he broke away and flund himself over the banisters of a staircase to the stone floor below to death. The special corres- pondent of the London Evening News describes the 'cat' as follows:
"The 'cat' is one of the most dreaded forms of punishment in the whole penal code.
"Hardened criminals regard it as second only to the gallows.
penology to recall that the penalty for treason in England. hanging, drawing and quartering, remained in force until as late as 1870. "In the first decades of the same century women were branded and whipped, and until 1837 a perjurer was liable to be nailed by the ears to a pillory. There were 223 offences punishable by death, including the 'crime' of damaging West-minister Bridge, or ap- pearing on it in disguise." When one is minded of such barbarities, the "cat" would appear too humane for any hardened criminal.
re-
It calls for no surprise either when the matter is viewed psychologically. Enlightened penologists may exert their utmost to reduce corporal punishment to the minimum, but human nature, the British notwithstand- ing, is so constituted that a certain amount of sadistic impulse, no matter how residual, will always remain and will make itself felt whenever there is a chance. The "cat" and "the third degree" in America are but expres- sions of this impulse, which and the like of which no amount of enlightenment, we are afraid, will ever succeed in wholly abolishing. It has even been suggested that unless a man is armed with a sufficiently strong sadistic "Punishment is continued to the limit ordered only tendency in his mental make-up, he is not fit to be a
gaoler or a warden!
"A prisoner receiving the cat-o'-nine-tails is strapped with outstetched arms to the triangle and the punish ment is administered in the presence of the prison doctor, who first of all certifies that the man is fit to receive it.
"After feeling prisoner's pulse the doctor says 'one- and the first stroke is given.
if the man continues fit to receive it.
"It is stopped if he shows signs of collapse, and
But the surprise is that that those who created the the balance is administered later on.
system of extraterritoriality in China years ago on the "Few criminals are able to take a severe sentence ground that Chinese courts and prisons used torture are of the 'cat' at one time."
the very people among whom we find this interesting To one who reads history at all and has learnt to cat-o'-nine-tails. The greater surprise still is that ex- see man's social life in proper historical perspective, the traterritoriality in China must be maintained inspite of "cat" is no cause for surprise. It takes no student of Chinese reforms!
My Experience in Reading A Chinese Daily
By Lin Yutang ()
Mr. Durham S. F. Chen's article on "What Ails the Press of Shanghai?" in the last number of The Critic was both interesting and provocative. His account of the Shanghai press was hardly believable. I knew that, with the exception of the China Times, the respectable dailies of Shanghai have never been properly edited, but I thought Mr. Chen might have exaggerated. Having faith in human nature and human institutions in general, I spent eight coppers on one of the well- known local "big papers"-and who does not know their names? and prepared to set out on a voyage of exploration for myself. I wished to see that the things aren't quite so bad, and that the so-called Chinese genius for business enterprise, backed by one or two millions of capital, coupled with the renowned Chinese capacity for "composing literature," and supported by a reading public of about a hundred fifty thousand readers, couldn't produce just such a silly thing Mr. Chen described it to be. I discovered, however, that things are never so bad that they might not be worse. My faith in human institutions was visibly shaken, and I had a vague sense of horror as to what would be "the journey's end."
Not that I was dissatisfied with the size or the weight of the purchase. On the other hand, I was ex- tremely satisfied. Anybody who does not feel satisfied with getting over twenty pages of reading matter (but we will come to that by and bye) for eight or ten cop- pers must be a miser and an old grouch indeed. Sup- posing the literary burden in my hand to weigh four ounces, and supposing I should sell the old papers at six coppers a catty, I might still recover approximately one-fifth of my capital back, and think of all the educa- tional, inspirational, and information-al matter I might glean from its pages before parting hands with it to the second-hand dealer! I told myself that the things of truth and beauty which I might find therein would de- finitely become a part of my personality and increase my spiritual riches.
I had, comparatively speaking, very little difficulty in locating its "front page." for if it is not on the out- side, it must be on the inside. What surprised me was that the front page actually consisted of less than one third of a page, tucked away in what we would call the "lowest" bottom corner of the fourth page of the first
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