Looting of Changsha

With the Nationalist troops which normally protect central China withdrawn to defend Nanking from the advancing Peking war lords, a raggle-taggle army swept down on the river city of Changsha, capital of Hunan province, and laid it low. Correspondents were unanimous in describing the Changsha looters as a Communist army. Only such precisians as the U. S. State Department put the word in quotation marks. For although it was probable that avowed Communists were among the bandits, they carried no Communist banners, posted no Communist proclamations, set up no Communist government. Numbering 10,000 they picked this city of over 500,000 souls clean of loot, collected a ransom of 700,000 Shanghai dollars ($264,000), moved on to attack Hankow, "Chicago of China" and Kuling, mountain resort.

Normally several hundred U. S. citizens live in Changsha, some 2,500,000 of U. S. money is invested there.* Thanks to the U. S. Navy and its gunboat Palos most U. S. residents were evacuated before the looting.

A fact not often remembered is that there is a permanent U. S. fleet in Chinese waters, at present consisting of 41 warboats. The river gunboats, most active part of this fleet, are not only permanently stationed in China, most of them were built in China./- Water in the Siang-Kiang river was so low last week that destroyers could not navigate it. To rescue U. S. citizens the flatdecked little Palos which can float wherever it is three feet deep, nosed its way over the sandbars to Changsha. Bandit bullets ricocheted off her armored deck house, wounded five U. S. seamen. Loaded with refugees, the Palos dropped down stream again.

*Yale in China, Presbyterian church, Singer Sewing Machine Co., Standard Oil Co. of New York, Liggett & Myers Tobacco Co., Seventh Day Adventists.

/- Three years ago six river gunboats were building in a Shanghai dock yard, building altogether too slowly to suit the U. S. commandant.

"It's the rain." explained the Chinese shipmaster. "Workmen won't work in the rain without umbrellas, and the Cantonese soldiers have mobilized all our umbrellas." The U. S. commandant did not argue.

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