Dictator Unkidnapped

In their cables this week, seasoned China correspondents had an adjective for the way in which the kidnapping of Premier & Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek was ended, and that adjective was "preposterous." In any Occidental sense it was preposterous that the most powerful man in Eastern Asia should have been violently overpowered with the killing of 46 of his guards; lost his false teeth in the process; insisted upon reading the Bible during most of his 13 days' captivity at the hands of a "onetime dope fiend," Young Marshal Chang Hsueh-liang; and then should suddenly have returned by air to Nanking announcing that he himself was partly to blame for his own kidnapping and that the kidnappers had let him go partly because they had been much moved by reading some 50,000 words of his private daily diary covering 1936. In Oriental eyes there was nothing preposterous about all thisidnapped Premier & Generalissimo's extremely businesslike and beauteous Wellesley-graduate wife, Mme Chiang Kai-shek (Soong Mei-ling), left Nanking courageously by plane for the kidnappers' lair at Sian in Central China. With her flew her brother, T. V. Soong, Chairman of the Bank of China, and that enigmatic Australian "adviser," William H. Donald, who has been attached at various times for a number of years to both Kidnapper Chang and Kidnappee Chiang. They alighted amid fog and semidarkness at Sian. Rabble soldiery on the airfield held hundreds of flaming torches. These were the troops of too-little-noted General Yang Fu-cheng.

Roughly speaking, the situation was that around Kidnappee Chiang were a few hundred troops of Kidnapper Chang and around them were a few thousand troops of General Yang, who might be considered as having highjacked the kidnapping. At much greater distance were thousands of troops of Kidnapper Chang's main army and also Nanking Government armies rushing toward Sian, while Nanking bomb ing planes of U. S. pattern wheeled ominously in the sky.

Straight to her kidnapped husband rushed impulsive Mme Chiang and made him comfortable with a new set of false teeth she had brought in her purse. Next thing China knew, Generalissimo Chiang, Mme Chiang and Banker Soong all joined in sending the most positive orders to the Nanking Government that its forces under War Minister General Ho Ying-chin must not approach any nearer to Sian, and they halted in their tracks.

Unquestionably cashhe kidnappee must lead China into an immediate war with Japan (TIME, Dec. 21 et seq.)arrive in ostentatious military regalia. The Generalissimo changed to civilian clothes and flew ahead to Nanking, followed two hours later by the Young Marshal in a cheap Chinese cotton-lined robe, veritable sackcloth & ashes. The Generalissimo was met by China's elderly Puppet President Lin Sen and 200,000 cheering Nankingese. The kidnapper drove quietly through back streets to settle down as the house guest of Ransomer T. V. Soonganding out thousands of words evidently concocted by mutual agreement to dispose of China's greatest kidnapping of all time as smoothly as Britain disposed of the one and only voluntary abdication in her history (see p. 13). Sleek, polished, cosmopolitan Kidnapper Chang declared: "I am by nature rustic, surly and unpolished, an impudent lawbreaker who committed a great crime. ... I was completely unworthy to return with you, Chiang Kaishek, to Nanking, so I have followed you. ... I shall never decline what is beneficial to our country even if it means my death."

Kidnappee Chiang declared, "Through poor leadership, I, as the commander-in-chief of the National Armed Forces, must hold myself responsible for the incident [his own kidnapping] which makes my heart ache. ... If I have any selfish motives or do anything against the welfare of the country then anybody may consider me a traitor and may shoot me. ... If my words and deeds are in the least insincere, if I neglect the ideals of our Revolution, my soldiers may treat me as their enemy and may also shoot me. ... As you, Chang Hsueh-liang, have rectified the mistake [kidnapping] at an early stage and the crisis has not been prolonged, I believe the Nanking Government will be lenient with you. ... If I made any promises to you or signed anything while at Sian it would amount to destruction of the Chinese Nation. . . ."

It was considered likely that the Young Marshal, flush with millions, will travel for a time abroad and ultimately be given another Chinese Army under the Generalissimo. Joy in China at the happy ending of the crisis reached such transports that even that uncompromising teetotaler, "The Christian Marshal" Feng Yu-hsiang, announced as a matter of national moment, "I have drunk a full glass of wine, toasting the deliverance of the Generalissimo."

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