Powers Disunited in the Face of China
THE BEIJING AND SHANGHAI CONTROVERSIES

It is to be feared that in the face of Chinese xenophobia, France, England, Italy, the United States, and Japan are no more united than they are in the face of Germany, Bolshevik Russia, Ankara, and the Rif. Such apprehension is justified by the controversies currently raging in Beijing's diplomatic corps.
We have recounted the events that took place in Shanghai on May 30. The police of the International Municipality were forced to suppress the riot by force of arms. Since then, Chinese agitators have continued to cry bloody blood and demand punishment from the Shanghai authorities and their agents. The weak government of Tuan Chi Jui, intimidated by the protests and petitions, was careful not to omit this request from the thirteen-point note submitted to the powers on June 24.
From the outset, anxious to calm things down, the diplomatic corps in Beijing set about opening an investigation into the incidents of May 30. It therefore dispatched a commission of three secretaries to the scene, tasked with working in concert with three Chinese officials also sent from the capital. But the investigations had to be quickly concluded, as the three Chinese officials launched into all sorts of political demands unrelated to the skirmish.
Armed with the report its emissaries had submitted, the diplomatic corps in Beijing then took up the matter, appointing a three-member commission (the ministers of France and Italy, and the American chargé d'affaires) to negotiate with the Chinese government. But the Chinese ministers, frightened by the responsibilities they would incur, shied away. Representatives of the diplomatic corps were still waiting for their interlocutors.
In the meantime, a very regrettable event occurred: the disclosure of the report prepared in Shanghai. This report condemned the local authorities: the (English) police officer who gave the order to shoot, Colonel MacEwan, the (English) police chief, who, absent, did not take direct command of his men, and the president of the municipality, who, this year, happened to be an American, Mr. Fessenden, held legally responsible.
One can imagine the protests that resounded in Shanghai and throughout the Anglo-Saxon world, and the clamor of the Chinese nationalists, thus encouraged to redouble their violence. The English newspapers reported that the investigation conducted in Shanghai was not adversarial, that the incriminated individuals were not given the opportunity to defend themselves and to question the witnesses heard against them. They demanded a tribunal. From a distance, it is impossible for us to assess exactly what happened. After all, the British Legation in Beijing was represented among the investigators by its First Secretary, Mr. Vereker. Did he approve the report? Did he refuse to sign it? The second hypothesis is the most likely, since the British chargé d'affaires, Mr. Palairet, was among the protesters. Did the authors of this report, including a Frenchman, want to accuse the British and the Japanese in the vain calculation of making the Chinese movement lose its character of general xenophobia and weaken it by directing it against two of the interested powers? Was it with this aim that neither the British chargé d'affaires nor the Japanese minister were included in the three-member commission appointed in Beijing to negotiate with the Chinese ministers? If such a tactic was truly pursued, it can only be described as weak, false, and dangerous. It takes us back, mutatis mutandis, to the worst days of Lausanne. But the sad story continues. The municipality of the foreign community of Shanghai, an Anglo-American community not to be confused with the French community located south of the Yangkingpang, now declares to the diplomatic corps in Beijing that, legally, it does not fall under its authority. And the assertion, although questionable, can very well be supported. We have before us a dispatch from the State Department to the United States Minister in Beijing, dated March 7, 1887, which would rather prove Mr. Fessenden and his colleagues right. The Shanghai community was originally freely formed on land placed at its disposal by China and which was not ceded to any power, unlike the example of Tien-Tsin, Hankéou, and Canton. However, over the municipalities of Shanghai, the control of the diplomatic corps is tradition. This is what the French minister, Mr. de Martel, represented, when he withdrew from the commission of three. Did the representatives of England, America, and Japan speak out against him? A deplorable beginning. The powers that are quarreling in this way have to reject two Chinese notes that threaten their entire colonization with a veritable death sentence. Let us hope that the governments concerned will promptly end this quarrel.

PERTINAX.