CHINA "Unfit"

"Unfit"

Chinese too had a New Deal last week. The entire Peiping Government of North China was reshuffled so completely that its Jack of Clubs, the "Young Marshal" Chang Hsueh-liang, vanished from the pack. From Central China came the dealer, Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek. Carrying with him the portable powers of Life & Death, he roared north, preceded and followed by trainloads of Chinese soldiers who had actually been paid, possessed rifles, ammunition and such expensive luxuries as machine guns and bombing planes.

Too smart to fight Japan, the Generalissimo had left that hopeless & thankless task to the "Young Marshal" who miserably failed to hold Jehol (TIME, March 13 et ante). Last week the New Deal was dealt ceremoniously on the General Staff Train which halted 90 miles short of Peiping at Paotingfu Station. Crestfallen "Young Marshal" Chang resigned his rulership of North China. His resignation was face-savingly "refused" by the Generalissimo until two days later. Meanwhile Young Chang was permitted to proclaim that his sole purpose was to die for China, battling the Japanese in person at the head of a Chinese division. With that proclamation properly published, Young Chang took off from Peiping in his luxurious trimotored plane for the safety of the Shanghai International Settlement. From there he proposed to sail at once for Europe--oblivious to the fate of 150,000 Chinese soldiers whom he left stranded in Jehol and the Peiping area. The official flourish of abdication (for it amounted to that) was made in high Chinese style by the Young Marshal, thus:

"After the loss of the Three Eastern Provinces [Manchuria proper], I tried my best to remedy my faults, but the fall of Jehol convinced me I am unfit to keep command. I have not fulfilled my duties to the Government and my responsibilities to the people.

"In the last months I met with many difficulties and unexpected developments occurred. If I remain in office one more day, I will be blamed still more. Even if I die, my death would be of no advantage to the Government nor would it improve the situation. Therefore, I ask the Government to allow me to resign as a sign of its dissatisfaction and to appoint a capable successor."

Shades of Chang. Among the few defunct persons who are kept and will long remain in China's memory is Young Marshal Chang's dread, great father, Old Chang Tso-lin. Self-made, he rose from despised cooliehood through common banditry & murder to become the ruler of Manchuria. Capturing Peking in 1926 he made himself in effect a King-Dictator, negotiating on equal terms with foreign governments. Affecting a fondness for tiger's blood, which he drank warm from the beast as an aphrodisiac, Old Chang was one of the last absolute monarchs, complete with a decadent, dissolute court and sure of instant obedience when he said (as he often did), "Cut off that man's [or woman's] head."

As Old Chang's eldest son, the Young Marshal was reared in every vice from opium up & down. Accepted in Japan (which subsidized his father) virtually as a Crown Prince, the Young Marshal used to visit Japan's autumn military & naval maneuvers a la Edward of Wales. In 1928 Old Chang was assassinated by the dynamiting of his private car in circumstances which convinced Young Chang that the deed could only have been done by Japanese--for reasons still partly obscure.

Young Chang, embittered by his father's death and therefore unwilling to continue the House of Chang's tacit alliance with Japan, threw in his lot with the Nanking Chinese Government headed by "President," now Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek. That he had made a fatal mistake (from the point of view of the House of Chang) opium dreams helped to conceal. Eventually, 18 months ago, Japan brusquely drove the Young Marshal out of Manchuria (TIME, Sept. 28, 1931 et seq.). In Peiping the Rockefeller Hospital is credited with curing his opium addiction--but too late. Inexorably Japan continued to wrest more & more from Young Chang until, with the loss of Jehol. he had to get out of China last week--which does not mean that he may not triumphantly return. Early this year the Royal Bank of Canada and the Bank of Montreal were rumored to be receiving from Young Chang deposits at the rate of $500,000 gold per month.

Emperor Pu? Keeping out of Peiping last week, Generalissimo Chiang continued to live on his Staff Car, sent a henchman to be the new Mayor of Peiping and placed North China under the rule of his most trusted staff officer, General Ho Ying-chin, a veteran of scores of campaigns and China's present War Minister. Promptly General Ho sent picked Chinese brigades hot-footing up to a short distance from the Great Wall which Japanese soldiers held for 250 mi. last week, from Shanhaikwan on the seacoast inland to the borders of Inner Mongolia, well west of Peiping.

Ready to evacuate in his Staff Train at a moment's notice, Generalissimo Chiang browsed over dispatches from Tokyo. They quoted the Japanese Foreign Office press spokesman: "Our troops, advancing from Shanhaikwan, could clean up all North China in 60 days. They would then withdraw, leaving North China in the hands of the safest Chinese." From Japan's viewpoint the safest Chinese would be such War Lords as are willing to swear allegiance to China's onetime Boy Emperor, Henry Pu Yi, now Regent of Japanized Manchukuo. Soon Henry Pu Yi, whose name Japanese spell Pu I, may be Emperor Pu the First.

Son of Salt. A mighty man of paradox is Generalissimo Chiang who gives China a certain unity because since 1926 he has been the No. 1 Chinese.

Son of an ancestral family of salt tax collectors, Chiang graduated from Tokyo Military Academy in 1911, returned to China just in time to help capture Shanghai from the Imperial Manchu House. By 1923 he had become a trusted henchman of the late, great Dr. Sun Yat-sen who sent him to Moscow. There he obtained from the Soviet Government enough backing and munitions to start the Chinese Civil War of 1926 which enabled War Lord Chiang to conquer all China and become President.

In 1927 the President turned upon his former Soviet allies and has been trying ever since to stamp Communism out of China. Aside from a brief period of retirement in Japan, Generalissimo Chiang has lived in Nanking (where he recently completed a huge "foreign-style" house), only fleeing from the seat of Government when it was menaced by the Japanese attack on Shanghai. Today the seacoast and perhaps half the interior provinces of China do not challenge the authority of the Nanking Government which is recognized by the Great Powers.

Instead of being called Soviets the various councils which comprise the Nanking Government are called yuans. As in Russia the so-called "President" (Mr. Lin Sen) and so-called "Premier" (Mr. Wang Ching-wei) are of scant importance, effective power being centred nationally in Generalissimo Chiang and his Brother-in-law Finance Minister Dr. Sung Tse-wen, better known as T. V. Soong. Locally the Chinese people's talent for "muddling through" provides law & order under the regional dictatorships of War Lords like famed Han Fu-chu of Shantung Province (TIME, Oct. 3).

Though he withholds the provincial revenues from Finance Minister Soong and does about as he pleases, able War Lord Han leaves Shantung's relations with the Great Powers and the League of Nations to Nanking Foreign Minister Lo Wen-kan who writes & receives diplomatic notes for all China.

Until recently a majority of Chinese newspapers flayed Generalissimo Chiang as a coward and a traitor, first because he sent no troops to help the heroic Chinese 19th Route Army at Shanghai, second because his foreign policy has been non-declaration of war on Japan and trust in the League of Nations. Last week Chiang had a slightly better Chinese Press because--though few if any Chinese expected him to fight Japan--the Generalissimo might change his mind. Burning with their country's shame, thousands of Chinese students yearned to fight, passionately discussed the whole ghastly situation in round-table groups with sympathetic Christian teachers who kept their heads, reminded the students that China has absorbed all her conquerors of the past.

"Nation of Bandits!" Meanwhile in London last week, numerous subjects of George V whose sympathies remain with China gathered outside British Broadcasting House and cried, "Shame! Shame!" when a limousine drove up with Chief Japanese League Delegate Yosuke Matsuoka. As he entered the building an English voice shouted, "Japan is a nation of bandits!"

Inside, tactful B. B. C. officials put Mr. Matsuoka in a broadcasting studio as far removed as possible from that occupied by China's spokesman of the evening. Ambassador Quo Taichi. Later, enclosed by a solid phalanx of Scotland Yard detectives, Japan's Matsuoka got safely away. "Because I am a Japanese," said he to U. S. correspondents, "I can sympathize deeply with the California earthquake sufferers. . . . Your economic crisis is largely psychological rather than material. I believe you will have a quick recovery."

Since leaving Geneva, where he rejected mediation by the League of Nations between China and Japan, Mr. Matsuoka has been on a shopping tour, dickering for arms from Germany's Krupps and France's Hotchkiss, contracting for battleship fuel with Royal Dutch Co. at The Hague. Nervous lest Shopper Matsuoka should leave London without placing equally substantial orders, His Majesty's Government hastily revoked their partial embargo on arms shipments to Japan & China (TIME, March 6), authorized British munitions makers to sell as much as they can, thus bestowing work on as many British unemployed as possible.

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