Vital Step

At 4 p.m. on Nov. 11, the eve of China's National Assembly, five middle-aged men waited in the reception room of a snug, red brick house in Nanking. Five nonpartisan moderates, they had come--in a political atmosphere taut as a ripe boil--to seek audience with Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek, at his home.

The Gissimo greeted them gravely, served tea and cakes. Then, in behalf of China's middle-road parties, they presented a petition: would the Generalissimo postpone the Assembly until Dec. 1, in the hope that all parties might be persuaded to attend? The Gissimo said no--impossible. The nonpartisans politely persisted. Finally Chiang Kai-shek said: "Gentlemen, you have the interests of China at heart. You are nonpartisans. ... Go back to your colleagues. Test their opinions again. Find out if they will really join the Assembly should postponement be arranged."

That night the middle-aged delegates--a diplomat, a newspaper publisher, an educator, a historian and an industrialist--hurried from group to group. The Young China Party voted to come in.

Carson Chang's Rightist Social Democrats said perhaps. Dr. Lo Lung-chi's left-wing adherents were noncommittal. Back at the red house, the poll takers reported. The Generalissimo listened, then ordered a postponement--not for three weeks but three days. Unhappily, but feeling they could do nothing else, the five registered for the Assembly, cracked the united front of China's "third parties" against it.

New Start. On the morning of Nov. 15 the delegates crowded into the grey stone Assembly building on Kuo Fu Road. The Generalissimo and Mme. Chiang entered almost unnoticed by a side door. But among the drably clad provincials were some colorful figures: a Tibetan delegate, in bright-hued robes; the towering Catholic prelate, Archbishop Paul Yu-pin; little, rotund Publisher Hu Lin of China's foremost paper, Ta Rung Pao; brisk Premier T. V. Soong; and chubby Dr. Sun Fo, son of the Republic's founder, Sun Yatsen. The Communists were missing.

There was little gaiety among the delegates as they surveyed the empty seats (695 out of a specified 2,050). They listened quietly and attentively as Chiang spoke, in a high, springy voice. Concluding his injunction to delegates to adopt a constitution that "embodies both ideals and realities," Chiang said:

"If we try to place the cause for the political turmoil of the present day and also the sufferings of the people, we find that these are all due to the absence of the foundation of the state, and the present adoption of a constitution is a vital step toward stabilizing the foundation... and inaugurating constitutional democracy. . . ."

When the delegates met again, they would seek the foundation in the constitutional draft originally prepared for the 1937 Assembly, which was shelved by the Japanese invasion. Retaining the present five divisions of government (executive, legislative, judicial, control and examination), the constitution would supplant one-party appointees with elected officials, eventually bring China universal suffrage.

Last Time? Would it work? In a bitter, four-hour press conference at his headquarters at 17 Mei Yuan Tsin Chuan, a ten-minute walk from the Assembly hall, Communist General Chou En-lai said it would not. Chou's dark, limpid eyes darted from side to side restlessly. He never referred to the Assembly save as a "one-party, nation-splitting assembly," insisted that its convocation had slammed the door on peaceful negotiation. Chou talked ominously of a civil war in which Government armies would perish, but as he prepared to leave Nanking for Yenan (for the last time, he said, as he often had before), he significantly left a 40-man Communist delegation behind to carry on "if a new basis appears."

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