Return of Wu?

As the Chinese Government's officials at Peiping and thereabouts continued to kowtow to a few Japanese brigades last week, much of North China seemed to have been brought under the rule of Tokyo without a fight and by sheer bullying bluff. Suddenly, however, there was plenty of fighting at Peiping last week and behind it loomed the dramatic shadow of "The Scholar War Lord," Wu Pei-fu.

Amid the corrupt peasant-born super-bandits who ruled various parts of China as "war lords" ten years ago, Marshal Wu Pei-fu was the one old-fashioned Confucian scholar. A sad-eyed, firm-jawed little man with shaved skull and bedraggled mustache, Wu is supposed to be a descendant of one of Confucius' favorite pupils. At ten he could recite from the Chinese classics interminably and with feeling. His own poetry shows a gift for direct metaphor unusual in an Oriental. He had, moreover, a competent grasp of military strategy; he was incorruptible, brave and patriotic; his followers were proud to be called Wu mi ("infatuated with Wu"). He liked strong wine, singing and gold plate. His serious faults were his confidence that he was a greater general than Napoleon and his poor judgment of men. Wu at one time had all North China in his pocket. His ally, the "Christian General" Feng Yu-hsiang, betrayed and ruined him. Time and again Wu, sickened by China's chaos, has retired to a mountain monastery in Tibet to polish up his calligraphy and his poetry, but he has always remained a hero to the Chinese masses.

Wu's part in last week's shooting remained uncertain. Some dispatches had him on his way to the scene of the fighting "by caravan" from Tibet. But certain it was that on the scene was an old and faithful Wu mi, Wu's infatuated right-hand man, Mr. Pai Chien-wu, himself a descendant of an 8th Century poet. What happened:

On his way out of Peiping, the Chinese Governor whom the Japanese had ousted had conveniently left behind an armored train lolling at a junction ten miles south-west of Peiping. Early one evening last week some 60 Chinese and Koreans in civilian clothes, armed and led by Mr. Pai Chien-wu, boarded the train, rallied the Chinese troops and set out for the ancient walls of Peiping. The track the train was on leads for about ten miles along the southern Outer Wall of Peiping, passes the great central gate of Yungtingmen and ducks through a tunnel into the Outer City. Pai Chien-wu, no soldier, had no plan of attack. And his enemy was, not the Japanese, but the Nationalist Chinese garrison at Peiping whom the Japanese have demoted to a "Peace Preservation Force."

When Pai's train got near the Yungtingmen Gate, he began shooting, apparently to set off a pre-arranged uprising within the city. This idea fizzled. The Peiping garrison, properly warned, swarmed to the Outer Wall, shut and sandbagged the central gate and answered the attackers' fire. The train ground to a stop, began backing up, backed out into the night. Past midnight it came chugging back, this time spitting bullets from every window. The garrison, equipped now with trench mortars and machine guns, blazed away furiously. Nobody hit anything, except for one Chinese coolie who stepped fatally into the way of a trench mortar shell that fell short. After a while the steel train backed sulkily off again. Twice more, at dawn and at 7:40 a. m., the train lunged at Peiping, blasting away with a 3-in. gun, once getting through the railway tunnel into the Tartar City before it went backing & filling out of sight.

Feeble and foolish though all this was, it was enough to thrill all China with the rumor that the Great Wu had stirred himself, would presently arise to sweep the Japanese out of North China. Significantly Japanese Army officers, who normally love nothing better than a good provoking "incident," disclaimed all interest in the episode, described it as a "small mutiny" in the Chinese armies.

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