Level-Headed Refugee

Miss Faith Williams, younger daughter of the only U. S. citizen to be murdered by a Chinese during the present Chinese civil war (TIME, April 4), spoke to Manhattan reporters last week about her father, Dr. John E. Williams, who was Vice Chancellor of Nanking University at the time when he was shot in cold blood by a Chinese soldier intent on possessing Dr. Williams' watch.

The reporters may have been surprised to hear Miss Williams speak not bitterly but with rare discernment about the Chinese situation. She kept clear, as many have not, the distinction between the Conservative and Communist wings (now split apart) of the Chinese Nationalist party. It was a Communist Nationalist soldier fighting under the Conservative Nationalist General Chiang Kai-shek (before the split) who shot Dr. Williams. Miss Williams showed that she does not hold the Conservative general blamable, but rather looks to the Conservative Nationalist regime which he, Chiang Kaishek, has set up at Nanking, as the salvation of China.

Said Miss Williams: "Perhaps my father's death may awaken the Nationalist party to the dangers of Communism. . . . I am confident that the Conservative group will work out the salvation of that country in a few years."

She spoke with more animation of the firing, in reprisal, upon Nanking by a British and a U. S. warboat: "I remember that my father came to the boat on the morning of March 24 and told us* to 'be steady.'" "He thought we would be able to go back to the city and continue working in a few days, even though conditions were so unsettled.

"He went back. The firing on Nanking began the next afternoon. I cannot describe my feelings, as I watched from a gunboat while the city I had loved and called my home was being fired on.

"I was not told of my father's death until after we had been transferred to a freighter bound for Shanghai. Of course, if I had known, I would have rushed to him."

*Miss Williams and "My co-worker Nell Davis."