nd localities
which were not able to get a place in the regular procession organized
minor ones on their own account on the day before and after the
official demonstration. Making all possible allowance for the
intensity of Cantonese local loyalty and the fact that they might be
celebrating a Cantonese affair rather than a principle, the scene was
sufficiently impressive to revise one's preconceived ideas and to make
one try to find out what it is that gives the southern movement its
vitality.

A demonstration may be popular and still be superficial in
significance. However one found foreigners on the ground--at least
Americans--saying that in the last few months the men in power in
Canton were the only officials in China who were actually doing
something for the people instead of filling their own pockets and
magnifying their personal power. Even the northern newspapers had not
entirely omitted reference to the suppression of licensed gambling. On
the spot one learned that this suppression was not only genuine and
thorough, but that it meant a renunciation of an annual revenue of
nearly ten million dollars on the part of a government whose chief
difficulty is financial, and where--apart from motives of personal
squeeze--it would have been easy to argue that at least temporarily
the end justified the means in retaining this source of revenue.
English papers throughout China have given much praise to the
government of Hong Kong because it has cut down its opium revenue from
eight to four millions annually with the plan for ultimate extinction.
Yet Hong Kong is prosperous, it has not been touched by civil war, and
it only needs revenue for ordinary civil purposes, not as a means of
maintaining its existence in a crisis.

Under the circumstances, the action of the southern government was
hardly less than heroic. This renunciation is the most sensational act
of the Canton government, but one soon learns that it is the
accompaniment of a considerable number of constructive administrative
undertakings. Among the most notable are attempts to reform the local
magistracies throughout the province, the establishment of municipal
government in Canton--something new in China where local officials are
all centrally appointed and controlled--based upon the American
Commission plan, and directed by graduates of schools of political
science in the United States; plans for introducing local
self-government throughout the province; a