Wrestling with Shantung

China's biggest, thorniest problems lie in the famed Eastern province of Shantung. Famine stalks through groveling villages, and the towns are mostly held by a Japanese expeditionary force, similar to U. S. Marines in Nicaragua. Last week, however, there were signs that Shantung's problems will soon be mightily wrestled with by China's big, pious, go-getting Christian, Marshal Feng Yu-hsiang.

"Feng the Mighty" is still master of the world's largest private army, a largely self-supporting band of 150,000 men, each schooled in some useful trade (TIME, July 2). Just now the new Nationalist Government of China is engaged in disbanding its total armies of 1,500,000 men; and Marshal Feng, as the Nationalist War Minister, cannot very well keep his own superb force together while the others disband, without some excellent excuse. Last week he seemed to have found it in a word: SHANTUNG.

Addressing the Nationalist Cabinet in Nanking, and speaking with the great moral power of a Christian privileged to argue in both the State's interest and his own, Feng Yu-hsiang said:

"The time has come for us to assume a less aggressive attitude toward Japan. One cannot brandish the mailed fist at one's neighbor and then complain if he shows unfriendliness. I now believe in the sincerity of Japan's desire to enter once more into negotiations with our Government. . . . As soon as negotiations for the withdrawal of Japanese troops from Shantung are completed, we must despatch our own best soldiers to protect the lives and property of Japanese colonists there. . . . Since we are now awaiting the arrival of the new Japanese Minister [to China, M. Yoshizawa], I suggest that he be greeted in the friendliest manner possible and every effort made to reach an accord."

Since the private army of Marshal Feng unquestionably contains the Nationalist Government's "best soldiers," there is no question that the War Minister means to police Shantung with his own men. Doubtless that would be well for the desperate, starving Shantungese. If they are not to perish many a hard job must be done, just such job as Feng's tough soldiers are well schooled to do--farming, road building, weaving, dike construction, and rehabilitation of areas ravaged by China's civil war.

Whether "Feng the Mighty" will be permitted to shoulder this giant's burden--and incidentally to pocket Shantung--was not clear last week. At Nanking other Nationalist leaders were loath to comment; but Finance Minister T. V. Soong, brother-in-law of President Chiang Kaishek, did reveal that he has worked out a program for disbanding all but 715,000 of the new State's 1,500,000 troops. Whether some, any or all of Marshal Feng's troops would be disbanded, shrewd Dr. Soong would not say.