The Breckenridge News

CHINA NEARING CRISIS.
Test of Government by Provincials
Believed to Be Inevitable.

In the opinion of students of oriental affairs, China is rapidly approaching a great crisis in her history. The uprising in Szechuan province is expected to extend to other neighboring provinces, and especially to the southward, where the Mongolian element has for many years been opposed to the reigning Manchu dynasty. Evidently prepared for trouble, the Chinese government has been quick to dispatch troops into the disaffected district.

It is believed at Washington that the government will be able to suppress the present disturbance, though the unforeseen disastrous flooding of the Yangtze valley is expected to drive thousands of the unfortunate natives, whose means of support have been destroyed, into the ranks of the revolutionists.

But it is believed that this Szechuan uprising is only the precursor of other outbreaks in different parts of the Flower Kingdom, for the fact is that the struggle now going on is really a gigantic test of the relative strength and power of the central government as opposed to the provincial governments. In other words, the situation resembles the great feudal wars of Europe in the middle ages. Japan also had to pass through a similar ordeal before the emperor was able to break the power of his mutinous barons, and it is believed that the Chinese government will now be put to the same test.

While the sympathy of occidental nations must remain with the Chinese central government, there can be no interference in this great internal strife, and the activities of other nations, at least for the present, must be confined to the protection of their own citizens resident in China.