Life — August 6, 1925 — page 16: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

AUG. 6, 1925 VOL, 86, 2231 “While there is Life there’s Hope” Published by LIFE PUBLISHING COMPANY $98 Madison Avenue, New York Cuartes Dana Gisson, President R. E. Sueawoop, itor F. D. Casey, Art Edit OMESTIC politics being a little dull, our President has been giving his mind con- siderably to China and that may be well. Reports of disturbance in that country, unusually prevalent in the papers for some months past, have not escaped the attention of the President, and as they are getting no better he has moved to propose a conference between repre- sentatives of the Nine-Power Treaty to discuss extra-territorial rights in China and Chinese customs. How serious a matter does disturb- ance in China really come to? Blooming modestly on an inside page of the New York Times recently was a dispatch from Chicago conveying the opinion from Henry K. Norton as ex- pounded in a lecture under the Norma: Wait Harris Foundation at the Uni- versity of Chicago, to effect that “the desperate game of world politics now being played about Manchuria and Siberia is as much loaded with danger to the United States as the game played at Sarajevo eleven years ago.” Mr. Norton pointed out that Russia has been struggling to get a place in Europe these many centuries and now has re- established herself in the position in Asia that she had before the war; that in Siberia the Soviets now occupy all the territory of the former Russian Empire, and have a firm hold on Mon- golia besides, and that the backward- ness of the Western nations to make any concessions to China has exasper- ated the more awakened Chinese and made them increasingly open to Bolshe- vist mischiefs. Another Harris Foundation lecturer in Chicago, Mr. Woodhead, editor of a Crain Maxwen., Vice-President Lancnorne Gisson, Secretary ond Treasurer British paper in Peking, finds Japan playing a more active part in China’s internal affairs than any other power (which indeed is what one would ex- pect) and Soviet Russia “deliberately ranged in opposition to the treaty powers,” and working publicly and secretly with the Chinese to oppose existing treaties. Russia, the Nine- Power Treaty governments, and the non-treaty powers—Austria, Germany and some of the South American coun- tries—constitute, he explains, the three rival ambassadorial groups now exist- ing in Peking. 'HE countries having the largest in- terests in China are the United States, Great Britain and Japan. Of these the United States was until lately the nation most favored by China, but has lost of late that desirable position which was due to evidences of disinter- ested friendship in years past. So said Bishop Roots of Hankow, at a speech at the Harvard Commencement where they gave him an honorary degree. The Chinese now charge us, he said, with imperialism, capitalism, “and the selfish unfriendliness to China which is now charged against all the foreign powers except Russia.” Russia, it seems, as soon as the Soviets had captured nounced all conquests made in China by the government of the Czar, and all privileges to Russian traders, and con- sented that no Russian should be exempt from the jurisdiction of a local Chinese court. That looked to the Chinese like the way to behave, and Russia forth with ranked first among the nations in deportment and in Chinese favor. All these things, or as many of them as are so, are doubtless understood by our Government and obviously our President and his associates in state- craft are looking about to see what had best be done. With Soviet Russia lay- ing so many eggs in so many nests in Asia and elsewhere, and few of them so bad but what they may hatch out, it behooves all ocean-going governments to be attentive, and especially ours, to the end that we shall know which way to run in case of earthquake and have our aprons out if the skies fall. LL of which being so—or some of it, anyhow—it is in a way reassur- ing to have General Pershing express himself as pretty well satisfied with the results of the muster day we had last month and of other efforts to keep the skeleton of a competent military force in this country. He thinks we are go- ing to do it and will have a citizen sol- diery that can make quick work of or- ganization if needed. The General is extra-strong for peace but when he works to have an available army he must see a possibility of sometime hav- ing use for it. Such a possibility is never absent, but since the nations that fought in the last war got enough and do not want to fight again, if we are involved in any serious war at all soon, it is much more likely to come out of Asia than out of Europe. But the great work of diplomacy is to hinder it from coming at all, and that, undoubtedly, is the errand that President Coolidge is on in his efforts to secure a conference on China. Hovpnt exposed a fake psychic the other day by flashing an electric pocket light in her face after other lights had been turned off. The medium fainted, that was all. If she was a bogus medium the sudden light would not hurt her, but if she and her per- formance were of a more valid quality and she were diffusing the substance called ectoplasm, as some mediums seem to do, a sudden flash of light, so the experts say, would act something like a sudden kick in the stomach and would make the medium ill and might kill her. Some kind soul with sympathy for en- thusiasts ought to warn Houdini of the risk he runs ‘of producing a fatal accident in his zeal for exposure. E. S. Martin. comicbooks.com