The Shanghai Affair and After

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NOW the storm that has raged along the Pacific coast of China--from Hong-kong to Tientsin, and up the Yangtse Valley, penetrating the almost impregnable gorges to the province of Szechuan--is subsiding into a drizzle; the causes, immediate and remote, that led to the unfortunate incident at Shanghai and set the whole nation aflame and the entire world pondering over a solution, are gradually emerging; and its effects, present and future, national and international, are approaching a stage which does not absolutely defy estimate and prophesy. We are in a position, then, to obtain a comprehensive view of the whole affair. For the last two months the march of events has been so rapid and yet so zigzag as to present an impression at once of progress and retrogression. From the maze of news reports the public has extracted little but confusion and uncertainty. Yet if one is able to grasp the fundamentals and quit roaming the by-paths of the mysterious oriental labyrinth the Chinese situation is not inexplicable. These fundamentals we shall first attempt to summarize. In the light of the findings, an estimate can probably be made of the bearings of the Shanghai affair upon the national aspirations of the Chinese and upon the international relationship of the world. Finally, we shall discuss the projected Customs Conference and the Extra-Territoriality Commission, upon the result of which depends so much of China's fate, America's prestige, and world peace.

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In the present world it is impossible to achieve isolation, either by force or by peace. Thus, in the company of everything that is undesirable and perhaps wretched, industrialism, with its wake of quantity production at the expense of those who have to live and labor, is able to blaze the trail from Manchester to Shanghai. In the West exploitation has had to diminish, for the West has had enough of it--almost a hundred years. But East of Suez capital has found good soil. Through all the dust that has been stirred up by the killing of demonstrating students, through the flames that have been fanned ablaze by Chinese nationalism, we may see, indistinctly but certainly, the grim struggle between capital and labor, with the British and the Japanese bearing the full share of responsibility for capital--this time...