Strongest Man

(See front cover)

He stands full six feet tall. No brittle yellowman he, but broad and bronzed and bland. Bible in hand or coat pocket. Pistol within arms reach. Devout Christian. Dead shot. Master of the world's largest private army--195,000 men. Such today is China's Strongest Man: Marshal Feng Yu-hsiang, pronounced "Fung U-sheeang."

Recently the major northern cities of Peking and Tientsin were captured by Feng's troops (TIME, June 18, 25); but last week he ostentatiously eschewed the role of Conqueror. With a gesture that smacked of authentic greatness the Broad Bronzed Marshal left a part of his victorious forces in the field and modestly withdrew to Honan Province, central China.

Friends of Feng--and he has many, white, yellow--hailed him as renouncing personal glory and proving the sincerity of his professed devotion to a great ideal: Nationalism or the Unification of China under a People's Government. That ideal in concrete form is at present the new Nationalist Government at Nanking. To it Marshal Feng sometime since pledged the voluntary support and subordination of himself and his immense, completely independent army. In the name of the Nationalist Government Peking and Tientsin were conquered.

"BUT," say in effect the enemies of Feng--and they are many, white, yellow,--"But really, you know, Feng has conquered those same cities before, in so many other names. . . . Feng's a traitor, a Judas! Of course the Missionaries like him. He's the only Chinese War Lord they ever converted. But watch out for Feng! He gets his arms from Moscow, got 27,000,000 cartridges. He'll ditch the Nationalists yet and keep Peking for himself."

Happily the Strongest man seemed, last week, on the point of wiping from his scutcheon the stain of treachery. Despatches reported him in complete harmony with the new regime, said that he and the onetime Nationalist Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek would shortly go to Peking and there jointly celebrate the union of all China proper under the banner* of Nationalism.

Traitor's Past. Though nearly all journalistic historians of modern China explicitly describe Feng as a "traitor," .the Christian Marshal's missionary friends continued, last week, indignant at the adjective. The peculiar reasoning by which the missionary mind arrives at a conclusion opposed to the journalistic has seldom been better exemplified than by Miss Luella Miner of the Shantung Christian University, who wrote last week: "I challenge [anyone] to point to any 'cause' or superior officer or associate whom Marshal Feng has 'deserted' or 'betrayed' that has not been discredited later by those who did not have the vision and courage to do it when Feng gained unpopularity by his 'treachery'."

Such logic, profoundly philosophical, is unanswerable. Men with the vision to betray superiors who are later ruined and discredited, have not seldom achieved that universal esteem which may soon be the portion of Feng Yu-hsiang.

To be specific, in October, 1924, Feng Yu-hsiang was a General subordinate to Marshal Wu Pei-fu, "The Scholar War Lord," then supreme at Peking. From Manchuria the great War Lord Chang Tso-lin was advancing against Wu. So absolutely was the Christian General trusted by his superior that when Wu Pei-fu sallied forth to engage Chang Tso-lin, one third of Wu's armies were commanded by Feng. What ensued has been authoritatively set down by Professor Herbert H. Gowan of the University of Washington: " [As Feng led his troops] out of Peking, his American Chaplain, Mr. Robert Gailey [at present Y. M. C. A. secretary at Peking] offered prayer for the speedy crushing of Chang. . . . On

October 22 . . . came . . . the treacherous coup of Wu's 'Christian General' who abandoned his post at the Jehol passes, descended upon Peking, compelled President Tsao to issue mandates cashiering Wu Pei-fu . . . and moved his forces to attack Wu in the rear.

Wu, thoroughly discredited, fled, lived to recoup his fortunes, was finally defeated by the Nationalists, has now retired into a Tibetan monastery (TIME, April 16).

Feng's Good Points. To catalog all the black and bigoted deeds charged against Christian Feng would be ridiculous. The Strongest Man will be remembered for his many good points.

Born in 1880 of poorest parents, in Anhwei Province, he nearly starved during one of the periodic famines caused by overflow of the Yellow River, called "China's Sorrow."

At 18 Feng was a private in the then Imperial Army. Shortly after the Boxer Rebellion (1899-1902) he became an officer. Somewhat later Feng was deeply shocked and offended by two Chinese doctors who attempted to exact a fee for telling him that an ulcer from which he was suffering must be due to his "vicious life." Conscious of his virtue the young officer spurned his insinuating Chinese doctors, turned to the Mission Hospital at Peking, was cured, can repeat to this day the words of the Christian doctor who attended him: "There is nothing to pay. I only want you to remember that God loves you, and sent me to heal you."

Major Feng was baptized by a Methodist Episcopal clergyman of his own race in 1913, immediately set about converting his 500 men, and in 1915, after becoming a Brigadier General, led a sensationally successful prayer for rain in Szechwan Province, first citing the Scriptural precedent of Elijah's prayer for rain on Mount Carmel.

By the further grace of God, General Feng was gazetted a Provincial Governor and for some years campaigned with fiery zeal against opium, prostitutes, drink, tobacco. Meanwhile he had learned to write and had composed a military manual entitled: The Spirit of the Soldier. When several Japanese thieves were caught by his police General Feng demanded an apology from the local Japanese consul, at whom he roared: "I have never met a good Japanese! Are you all bad? Has Japan no shame left?" In a more tender moment the Governor wrote of his admiration for, "The great President Ling Kong, who freed the American slaves."

The Chinese Republic was now becoming fictional as succeeding Presidents fell more and more under the dominance of War Lords such as Wu Pei-fu. But the Christian General had been all the while building up a personal army which is today unique in the ability of its troops to support themselves without looting--a common practice of other Chinese armies but punished by Marshal Feng with Death. Instead of an army of bandits, why not an army of artisans? The Christian Marshal's answer is to teach all his soldiers some useful trade. One battalion weaves on portable looms, another carpenters, another makes boots, and their prices are "right." The result is that during the long seasonal lulls in Chinese Civil War the soldiers of Feng Yu-hsiang have been busiest and most welcome. Clean and well-disciplined, each member of the mob that is now an army takes his turn with washboard and with mop.

After betraying Wu and seizing Peking (see p. 17) the Christian War Lord took a grave step. Until then the Republican Government had fulfilled the term of an agreement signed with the head of the Manchu Dynasty, in 1912, whereby the abdicated Boy Emperor was guaranteed the retention of his palace in Peking and a pension of 4,000,000 taels per year. Feng brushed this contract aside, ousted the Boy Emperor from his palace, and gave that young man such good reason to suspect that he would be murdered that, with the aid of his British tutor, Mr. R. F. Johnston, he escaped the guard set over him by Feng, fled to the Japanese concession at Tientsin and still resides there as "Mr. Henry Pu Yi."

As the Civil War continued War Lord Feng was driven from Peking and retired to his present famed war base at Kalgan, an impregnable stronghold 100 miles north of Peking. There Mr. and Mrs. Feng (she a onetime Y. W. C. A. worker), their several scampering children and a Swiss governess were "at home," until the restive Christian War Lord moved down into central China for the campaign now victoriously completed.

The charge that Feng Yu-hsiang is a "Red" or a "Bolshevik" is palpably absurd. The sanctity of private property and of the Holy Trinity are the rocks upon which he stands like a Bland Bronze Colossus. But the Soviet Government finds it desirable to subsidize Feng Yu-hsiang. He visited Moscow in 1926, and when the Soviet Embassy at Peking was raided in 1927, a warrant having been issued by the Dean of the Diplomatic Corps, there were found documents--Feng's friends say forged documents--which showed that he had received from Moscow 27,350,545 cartridges, 27,970 rifles, 10,000 hand grenades, 11,346 high explosive shells, 640 chemical shells, 3 airplanes. The present Nationalist Government was also originally financed from Soviet Russia; but its present leaders have broken sharply with Moscow; and they, together with the Strongest Man, face the Great Powers with a record now beginning to seem relatively unsmirched--for there are no better men than they in China, and millions worse.

* Red, with one white star on a blue field in the upper staff corner.