Crystallized Goodwill

The right adjective for Chinese remained last week "peculiar." It was peculiar that entire Chinese armies should scuttle out of North China, abandoning it without resistance to a few strutting Japanese who had delivered a brash ultimatum (TIME, June 17). It was peculiar that batches of arriving Japanese troops should be waited on in Tientsin by dainty Japanese geishas who pattered about bowing and serving them ice water, tea and pink lemonade without so much as a jeer from the abject Chinese populace. Finally it was most peculiar that in Nanking withered Chinese President Lin Sen and sleek Chinese Premier Wang Ching-wei should give a bounteous banquet at which their chosen Guest of Honor was the onetime Japanese Minister Akira Ariyoshi, newly elevated to the dignity of Japanese Ambassador to the Chinese Government.

With Japan in process of swallowing North China, President Lin and Premier Wang beamed politely upon their Guest of Honor as he declared, "I pledge myself to promote closer and friendlier relations between Japan and China. My Government attaches great importance to this, my mission." President Lin, a teetotaler and nonsmoker, next uttered compliments of exquisite cordiality, causing the Japanese Ambassador to exclaim: "This crystallizes the mutual respect and goodwill existing between our two countries!" Finally the Chinese hosts uncorked unlimited champagne and a peculiarly good time was had by all.

So far as possible the Chinese people have been kept in ignorance of their Government's capitulation. Over 100 newspapers in North China have been suppressed. Chinese and Japanese censorship remained ironclad. Japanese bombing planes thundered menacingly over Peiping. In Tientsin with feverish activity Japanese architects and landscape gardeners started doing over a onetime Imperial residence as if it might soon be occupied by Japan's puppet Emperor Rang Te of Manchukuo, the onetime authentic Emperor Hsuan Tung.

Because China has in wily and resourceful Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek a military leader who has set himself up as Dictator, he last week was the elected goat of all Chinese officialdom. Craven President Lin, craven Premier Wang and the whole craven Chinese Central Political Council met in Nanking just before offering champagne toasts to the Japanese Ambassador and solemnly adopted a resolution urging Chinese resistance to the Japanese but stating that they must naturally leave the supreme decision to Generalissimo Chiang who was in Szechwan Province fighting the Communists.

No official and no underling could be found with enough spunk to fly to the Dictator and deliver this resolution. Hence it was sent by telegraph. Dictator Chiang had only one advantage. He was so far in the wilds of West China that not even a Japanese bombing plane was likely to molest him. Warily he set part of the troops in his personal pay moving slowly toward North China. That Chiang planned any serious resistance to Japan few Chinese dared hope, and he did not go with his troops last week but stayed behind in the city of Chengtu with Mme Chiang who was ill.

China's only other move last week was to have her envoys in Western States signatory to the Washington Nine-Power Treaty recall to those powers that Japan was also a signatory and like them pledged herself under Article 1, Section 1 "to respect the sovereignty, the independence, and the territorial and administrative integrity of China." This pledge is now no more than wind among the willows, so disinclined are other Great Powers to hold Japan to their common pledge. Therefore the result of Chinese diplomatic protests last week in Washington, London, Paris, Rome, Lisbon, The Hague and Brussels was approximately zero.

In North China the cockiness of Japanese was such that when a Japanese officer motoring from Peiping last week observed that a single Japanese field telegraph pole had somehow caught fire he stepped on the accelerator, roared into Tientsin at 60 m. p. h. to report "the outrage." Soon a Japanese platoon had sallied forth into the very midst of hundreds of evacuating Chinese troops to "punish the offenders." The fact that four Japanese army scouts motoring in the wilds north of Peiping were detained by some Chinese officials overnight was reported in Japanese newsorgans under screaming headlines suggesting that "this indignity'' would necessitate Japanese invasion and occupancy of the Chinese Province of Chahar.

Amid all this Chinese woe there was one Great Power whose leader last week made a gesture friendly to Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek. Benito Mussolini sent to him as a gift a monster four- motored Italian bombing plane worth $150,000.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.