Shore Excursion

Forty European and U. S. travelers on a world cruise stepped off the S. S. Reliance at Tientsin last week, entrained for Peiping to visit its famed Temple of Heaven. As they drove up to its mellow walls they saw thousands of Chinese crowded before the Temple gabbling excitedly. Soon a knot of Chinese soldiers appeared, piled up packages of drugs worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, set them blazing while the Chinese crowd laughed and cheered and hawkers did roaring business with peanuts and watermelon seeds.

Up rolled three military trucks from which came limping six woebegone prisoners dressed in cotton shifts, each tagged with his name for all to see. Their arms bound, the prisoners were forced to kneel in a row before a wall. Calmly their military escorts strolled over to them, drew pistols, plunked a bullet through the head of each at 15-sec. intervals. As each shot buried itself in the victim's brain a body slumped forward, inert. Only one prisoner required two bullets.

The U. S. tourists, few minutes before, had joked gaily at the prospect of seeing a public execution of Chinese drug peddlers, had had to be restrained by police from taking photographs because "China must not be ashamed." But the six executions turned many a tourist pale & sick. With drawn faces they climbed into their cars, drove off.

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