CONQUEROR

At precisely two o'clock, one afternoon last week, a long grim cavalcade of motor cars entered Shanghai from the South. Armed men, a hundred strong, rode in these automobiles--modern equivalents of a bodyguard of cavalry. A slim but unmistakably commanding Southern Chinese, clad in a uniform entirely unadorned, rode in the third motor car. This was the great Conqueror of half China (TIME, Sept. 20 et seq.), the Nationalist War Lord Chiang Kaishek.

So potent seemed the motor cavalcade that it was allowed to proceed into the barricaded French concession area, while Frenchmen speculated gloomily on General Chiang's reason for compelling admission to the international city. A few moments later, the cavalcade returned from the French quarter; and the Conqueror subsequently let it be known that his chauffeur had mistaken the way. Soon Chiang Kaishek, his entourage, and his formidable bodyguard were installed at a large residence. A flagstaff was erected and the red, white and blue Nationalist flag unfurled. On a blue field in the upper staff corner of a red flag rises a white sun.

Thoroughly modern, businesslike, Chiang Kai-shek had ready a short typed statement for the press: "Right must triumph. The Powers cannot keep China suppressed no matter how many warships and soldiers they send here. We will use the economic boycott against any nation which still desires to keep intact the treaties which have oppressed China in the past and validated the foreign concessions. The Chinese people are unable to feel contented so long as the present situation obtains."

These statements, firm, clear, dispassionate, were little more than a notation of the fact that China has been fired by the Nationalist program, "China for the Chinese," to a pitch seriously menacing the long supremacy in Chinese affairs of the Great Powers.

The question was, last week, "Will the Nationalists maintain in the present hour of victory that unity which has made their victory possible?" Already there are rumors of political dissention in the Nationalist ranks; but last week Chiang Kaishek, surrounded by his potent, mobile, efficiently modern bodyguard, seemed well equipped to master the half of China he has conquered.

Men asked one another, "Whence came he?"; and from the answer sought to divine whither he goeth.

Life came to Chiang Kai-shek 39 years ago in a tiny village near Ningpo in Chekiang Province. He ran away from being apprenticed to a merchant and embraced the career of arms, winning a scholarship at the Military Academy of Yuan Shih-kai, the Great Northerner, in far-Northern Chili. Later, he was sent by the Manchu Government to study at the Imperial Japanese Military College, Tokyo (1906).

When the Chinese Revolution burst (1911) he, a stripling of 23, was given command of a brigade by the Revolutionary party at Shanghai, and for two years he took advantage of his new position to live a life of drinking, gaming and debauch. Suddenly he abandoned these practices, and when his friends assembled to remonstrate, he cried: "I have given up this kind of life to give my real services to my country. You call yourselves my friends. Friends! Bah! Thank the gods, I shall not have to call you friends any more. You, who are supposed to be working for the country and serving the people, are not MY friends. Get out! Don't come here again!"

With the zeal typical of a converted sinner Chiang threw himself into active fighting in the cause of the great Dr. Sun Yatsen, late "Father of the Chinese Republic." Dr. Sun was at this time experiencing reverses, having been driven from Canton, his capital, by his own War Minister. Soon Chiang Kai-shek with 10,000 men had materially assisted in driving the traitor War Minister out of Canton, and back to his walled stronghold Waichow, a city deemed impregnable.

The question was, how to capture Waichow. Dr. Sun's generals declared the task impossible. Chiang Kai-shek asked to be admitted to lay his plan before the great Dr. Sun.

Sun was an old man then. He may have already decided that Chiang should be the sun to rise out of his own setting. They were believed never to have met; but when the young general entered, Dr. Sun rose dramatically to his feet, scanned carefully the face of Chiang Kaishek, and exclaimed: "Ah! Here is the second Sun Yatsen. He shall one day take my place! . . . Explain your project, Oh young and rising Sun."

Chiang Kai-shek explained his plan. It depended on his ability to fire his 10,000 soldiers with sufficient enthusiasm to follow him in a direct frontal attack on the walled city of Waichow during which they would nearly all most certainly be killed.

Chiang led the attack. Nine thousand one hundred of his ten thousand men were killed; but he captured Waichow. Strangely he did not lose but rather gained prestige after this prodigious but chery of his own troops, for he had himself fought in the thick of it. The reformed sinner, now a mighty hero, retired after his vic tory to a Buddhist temple for three months, a vacation period of medi tation which he has several times since repeated. The year 1922 found him in Moscow, acting as military liason officer for Dr. Sun, who had despaired by then of receiving aid from any other Great Power for his project of conquering China in the name of Nationalism, or "China for the Chinese."

When Sun died (1925), Chiang Kai-shek became the outstanding Nationalist leader, though still little known in the Occident. He led the greatest conquering army which China hao known in the present century up from Canton (TIME, Sept. 6), capturing successively all the chief strongholds south of the middle Yangtze river, including the present Nationalist Capital, Hankow (TIME, Oct. 18). Thence he has proceeded to capture all the great cities south of the lower Yangtze, completing his conquest of the Southern half of China by taking Shanghai (TIME, March 28).

This prodigious series of victories was not won even largely by force of arms. Chiang is the first modern generalissimo to advance with a veritable army of spies and propaganda agents proceeding his military columns months beforehand, filtering into the enemy camp, and persuading enemy soldiers to desert to the banner of "China for the Chinese." Withal, though he is careful to wear no distinguishing mark on his uniform, Chiang is a conqueror of dominating mien, not a comradely Bolshevik backslapper. He has publicly disavowed Bolshevism; and he is much more dangerous to the Great Powers than if he were a Bolshevik. His purpose is to accomplish, by any means (including Bolshevism where prudent) all that is implied by the threadbare but kindling phrase "China for the Chinese."

The great barbaric war lord of Manchuria and North China, Chang Tso-lin, remained last week the only Chinese still potent enough perhaps to stem the conquering Nationalists their present line along the Yangtze River and .keep them from overrunning North" China as they have South China.

Chang Tso-lin is a great lord in the good old way. He favors swallows' nest soup, tugs delightedly at his large ears when pleased, has his own officers or their wives spitted on sharp stakes when displeased, and keeps a likely string of concubines. At Peking, Chang reaffirmed to correspondents his violent antipathy to Bolshevism, and roundly declared that his troops were hastening southward and would drive the Nationalists out of Shanghai. At Shanghai Nationalist Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek told news- gatherers that "as soon as possible" his armies would press on to capture Peking. Will Chang fight Chiang? Great battles between them seemed inevitable last week, but it was probable that their secret agents were even then chaffering and hornswoggling in an effort to patch up terms whereby the Nationalists may be confirmed as masters of all China below the Yangtze river, with Chang Tso-lin remaining supreme north of the Yangtze.