Prudent Dynamiters

Colonel Carmi Thompson, personal investigator for President Coolidge in the Philippines (TIME, July 19 et seq.), known among Filipinos as "the Big White Friend of the Big White President," traveled last week 1,400 miles in and down anarchy-torn China while its War Lords desisted from their battles to let pass his all-steel, U. S. built "Blue Express."*

Landing at Shanghai, Colonel Thompson and his entourage sped to Peking without accident, saw there the blazing blue-tiled Temple of Heaven, and the Forbidden City, now moldering with decay. Returning to Shanghai, there to take ship for Japan, Colonel Thompson was informed that no sooner had his train passed the railway bridge just south of Nanking than it was dynamited, wrecking a subsequent train.

Though U. S. newsorgans headlined THOMPSON NEAR DEATH, it is exceedingly probable that the Chinese dynamiters could under no circumsances have been persuaded to blow up his train. They were spies of the Cantonese War Lord Chang Kaishek. Their intent was to cut off supplies from the Shanghai War Lord, Sun Chuan-feng. Well-informed of the movements of the Big White President's friend, they let him pass, mindful that his influence would bear directly upon whether the U. S. ever recognizes the Cantonese Government, recently extended by the conquests of Chang Kai-shek to include most of central China (TIME, Oct. 4 et seq.).

Status Quo. The Chinese status quo remained unchanged during the week, the principal military action still in progress being the slow advance against Shanghai of the Cantonese.

*Some years ago five such trains were in operation in China. Confiscation by the War Lords has left barely enough equipment for two trains which attempt the 700-mile run between Shanghai and Peking whenever civil war conditions permit.