China and the West

Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan.
June 16. [16.6.1919].
Chinesewise speaking, we are now having another lull. The three 'traitors' have had their resignations accepted, the cabinet is undergoing reconstruction, the strike has been called off, both of students and merchants (the railwaymen striking was the last straw), and the mystery is what will happen next. There are evidences that the extreme militarists are spitting on their hands to take hold in spite of their defeat, and also that the President, who is said to be a moderate and skillful politician, is nursing things along to get matters more and more into his own hands. Although he issued a mandate against the students and commending the traitors, the students' victory seems to have strengthened him. I can't figure it out, but it is part of the general beginning to read at the back of the book. The idea seems to be that he has demonstrated the weakness of the militarists in the country, while in sticking in form by them he has given them no excuse for attacking him. They are attacking most everybody else in anonymous circulars. One was got out signed 'Thirteen hundred and fifty-eight students', but giving no names, saying that the sole object of the strike was to regain Tsingtao, but that a few men had tried to turn the movement to their own ends, one wishing to be Chancellor of the University.