"Who's Got Peking?"

Troops marching under the banner of the Nanking Nationalist Government quietly occupied Peking, last week, but in such curious fashion that no man could say with certainty in whose hands the city actually lay. It had previously been evacuated (TIME, June 11) by the great War Lord Chang Tso-lin, who retired to Mukden, Manchuria, and lay there, last week, nigh to death from wounds inflicted by an assassin's bomb.

Theoretically Chang's evacuation left Peking to be occupied without a struggle by the Nationalist Army. But that army was in three sections, allied rather than subordinate under a nominal Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek. Last week Chiang was obliged to leave his personal army in the field, at a considerable distance from Peking, while he rushed to Nanking because of disagreement within the Nanking Nationalist Executive Council. Thus the first troops to march into Peking were 6,000 orderly soldiers of Chang's ally (nominally his subordinate) Yen Hsi-shan, the so-called "Model Governor" of Shansi Province. By Yen's orders certain of Chang Tso-lin's troops who had been preserving order in the city ad interim were allowed to depart with a Nationalist safe conduct, after their leader, General Pao Yulin, had partaken of a farewell ceremonious cup of tea. The Peking Diplomatic Corps informed the Nationalists, at this point, in the name of the Great Powers, that General Pao and his men, by preserving order through a difficult crisis, had deserved well of all concerned and must not be harmed or hindered in their progress toward Mukden.

All seemed well, but General Pao and men had scarcely left Peking ere they returned, driven back by the advancing army of a third Nationalist commander, famed Marshal Feng Yu-hsiang, the notorious professed "Christian" whose treachery is a byword, and who has several times made himself master of Peking. Last week he was of course an ally and a very nominal subordinate of the Nationalist Generalissimo.

Soon General Pao reported to the indignant but helpless Diplomatic Corps at Peking that Feng's troops had refused Pao's men passage through their lines, thus having repudiated the safe conduct of "Model Governor" Yen.

Shortly some 50,000 troops of "Christian" Feng Yu-hsiang surrounded Peking, which was still occupied by the 6,000 "model" troops, with luckless General Pao encamped outside the walls. The next presumptuous step of Feng's troops was to take General Pao into custody and disarm his men.

Grotesquely enough Marshal Feng himself was nowhere near Peking, last week, but was advancing upon Tientsin with another section of his enormous personal army, which probably totals 100,000 men. In Tientsin were large remnants of the armies of Chang Tso-lin which recently evacuated Peking. These troops, said to number 30,000 and excellently equipped, were commanded by the wounded War Lord's son, Marshal Chang Hsueh-liang.

With so many large, well armed and variously belligerent forces in the Peking-Tientsin area, alarm was general lest the most serious disorders if not battles should ensue. In the circumstances, it was permissible to ask hourly, last week, "Peking, Peking, who's got Peking?" Amid extreme crisis, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek issued at Nanking an astounding communique: "The military phase of the Nationalist movement has been completed, rendering unnecessary further warfare. The office of Generalissimo is automatically terminated. The military council of the Nationalist government hereafter will administer all military affairs." In conclusion Chiang said that he will now concern himself exclusively with "the problems of reconstruction."

Since to declare the "military phase" completed last week, seemed incredibly premature, observers sought some other reason for Chiang's resignation. They noted that it was followed immediately by the appointment of Nationalist Foreign Minister of Dr. C. J. Wang--a henchman of Feng Yu-hsiang. They deemed the notorious "Christian" dangerously in the ascendant, both at Nanking and in the Peking-Tientsin area.