Bingham on Yellowskins

Secretary of State Frank Billings Kellogg received much assistance in dealing with his Mexican problem. President Coolidge virtually took it off his hands by appointing Dwight Whitney Morrow as ambassador without consulting Secretary Kellogg, (TIME, Oct. 3). Last week Secretary Kellogg received more assistance, this time with his Chinese problem. Senator Hiram Bingham of Connecticut called at the State Department with clean cut suggestions.

The Chinese puzzle is made puzzling by the circumstance of there being an overabundance of political parties and armies in China, the ultimate success of none of which can be foreseen. To recognize one bellicose potentate and treat with him for the protection of U. S. life and property, is to court the ill will of that potentate's rivals and possible conquerors. The U. S. policy has been to pretend there is no such thing as a Chinese state but only a large part of a large continent filled with quarrelsome Asiatics against whose disorders the U. S. is protecting U. S. life and property with Marines, and whose political existence the U. S. will not recognize until the semblance of a unified China reappears.

Senator Bingham, after an all-summer inspection of the Orient, spoke to the following effect:

The vast size and the variations in thought & language in various sections of China, preclude the reappearance of a unified China for years to come, if ever.

Let China, therefore, be divided up into various sections and let the de facto governments of these sections be recognized informally if not diplomatically, but perhaps even guaranteed, by the U. S. and other powers.

Let Chinese-speaking U. S. agents, semi-diplomatic in nature be sent to each faction or government to offset Russia's efforts to establish Sovietism in China. "It is spreading like a prairie fire and we ought to have a counter-fire," said plain-spoken Senator Bingham.