Steaming Orders

With the Far Eastern sky flaming as red as the sunburst of the Japanese flag, President Hoover, looking worn and worried, summoned Secretaries Stimson of State, Hurley of War and Adams of the Navy for a White House Council. With them hurried General Douglas MacArthur, Chief of Staff, Admiral William Veazie Pratt, Chief of Naval Operations, and William Richards Castle Jr., Undersecretary of State. Dr. Stanley Kuhl Hornbeck, chief of the State Department's Far Eastern Division, brought along maps of China, laid them out in the Lincoln Study. The President and his advisers hunched over them, talked in low voices. Before President Hoover was a request from U. S. Consul General Edwin Sheddan Cunningham at Shanghai for more protection for U. S. citizens there.

Outcome of the White House conference was one that had grown more and more imminent all week. Commander-in-Chief Hoover said something to Secretary Hurley. Secretary Hurley spoke to General MacArthur. General MacArthur raced off for his office, scribbled something on a scratch pad, handed it to General George Van Horn Moseley, deputy chief of staff, who tapped out an order on his stenographer's typewriter with one finger. Then the President told an anxious nation:

"Directions have been given to send to Shanghai the 31st Regiment . . . now at Manila, together with 400 Marines [later increased to 600] on the transport Chaumont leaving tomorrow. The cruiser Houston and six destroyers left Manila this morning for Shanghai."

All week long the President had heard the ominous rumble of a distant war. Japan was on a rampage. But what could the U. S. do?

The President began by sending the Senate at its request the entire diplomatic correspondence that had passed between Washington and Tokyo and Nanking since the original development of Sino-Japanese hostilities in Manchuria. Secretary Stimson's exchange of views with the British Government, through Ambassador Sir Ronald Lindsay, terminated in an agreement whereby the U. S. and Great Britain decided to work shoulder-to-shoulder in protecting their citizens in Shanghai. Secretary Stimson also asked Japan, through Ambassador William Cameron Forbes, to make clear its stand in using the International Settlement as a base for military operations against the native city of Shanghai. He pointedly observed that the foreign section of Shanghai was already adequately policed, needed no armed reinforcements.

In London a man came out on the stage of the Hippodrome Theatre, said that Ray Atherton, U. S. Charge d'Affaires in whose hands rests the conduct of the Embassy now that Charles Gates Dawes has resigned as Ambassador, was urgently wanted on the telephone. War-wary Britons in the audience suddenly lost interest in the show. The message, it turned out, was from the Embassy, which wanted to be sure of the whereabouts of Mr. Atherton in case of an emergency.

Emerging from a conference with Secretary Stimson, Admiral Pratt ordered the entire Asiatic fleet to prepare for China service. "Our fleet will be ready to evacuate our nationals or to protect them if a crisis arises where mob rule prevails." said he. A correspondent asked him what would happen if Japan did not favor the move. "That," said Admiral Pratt, "would be just too bad."

Even before the White House conference, Admiral Montgomery Meigs Taylor, commander of the Asiatic fleet and grandnephew of President Zachary Taylor, had received preliminary orders. He was told not to lay up his flagship, the new 10,000-ton cruiser Houston, which was due to have her hull scraped at Manila, where Admiral Taylor served as a lieutenant under Dewey on the old U. S. S. Olympia in 1898. Finally came orders to proceed at once to Shanghai with the Houston and seven destroyers.

Meanwhile the entire U. S. battle force with a year's supplies on board silently swept out of the harbor of San Pedro. Calif., at midnight. It was to be joined by the scouting force, a complement which would eventually number 114 war vessels, for annual battle practice off Hawaii--seven days' sailing from China.

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