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"Japan must abandon her attitude of dominance in the Far East!" cried Hongkong Hu. "She must drop all pretensions to sponsorship of an 'Asiatic Monroe Doctrine.' This ambitious doctrine—tantamount to Japanese assumption of superiority in the Far East—must be dropped if fruitful collaboration between China and Japan is to be realized."
The bluster preceding Hongkong Hu's "if" could be discounted. What came after was of vast importance. It implied that Canton, which for four years has baited the Chinese Government at Nanking with charges of "treachery to China," charges of "supineness toward Japan," may now be ready to yield to the blandishments of Tokyo and its Shanghai Lily. Such a development, in which monstrous Japanese bribes would play an inevitable role, may well prove for China the turning point in her 20th Century history, a turning toward Asia for Asiatics with Japan at the controls.
Canton, because it is the farthest metropolis on the China coast from Japan and therefore least apt to be attacked, has been loudly, blatantly anti-Japanese. If even Canton is wavering, Japanese diplomacy could chalk up a major victory last week in Nanking, the "Capital of China" which strongly rules Central China, preponderates in the North and makes noises intended to sound like rule in the South.
"While So Many Starve." In Nanking the President of China is a personage venerable and quaint. President Lin Sen has the archaic beard and lineaments of a Chinese scholar of bygone days. He is philosophical, reflective, expressionless. He is Old China. On his round-the-world trip in 1929, Mr. Lin with gentle insistence curbed the lavish hospitality of his expatriate Chinese hosts. "In this hard year of 1929," said he, "let us not spend our time and our money upon fine banquets and rich food while so many starve."*
Nanking has an ornate and splendid new "White House," but President Lin modestly resides in a rented house. The White House, he seems to feel, should be occupied by the Nanking Government's real boss, Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek. But the Generalissimo's pose is precisely that he is not President. Last week the Chinese Communist armies, which the Government reports "almost exterminated" every few months, were again giving Generalissimo Chiang so much trouble that he placed himself at the head of forces rushing to avenge the murder of an Australian missionary. Left in command at Nanking was the versatile and brilliant Premier of China, Mr. Wang Ching-wei. Today he is carrying the awful onus of secret negotiations with Japan, fateful to China's whole future—the future of the most populous nation in the world.