Mukden Incident, Part II

Consul General Angus Ward hurried from a Communist people's court in Mukden, Manchuria last week to telephone the news to the nearest American diplomat, 400 miles away in Peiping. Ward and four members of his consulate staff had been freed from a Communist jail and were to be deported from Red China.

The U.S. Consul in Peiping relayed the report to Washington. From Ward's skimpy recapitulation and the splutterings of the Communist Chinese radio, the State Department pieced together the humiliating story. After holding the U.S. consulate members incommunicado for nearly a month (TIME, Nov. 21), the Communists had staged a hasty "trial," and convicted Ward and his aides of "brutally assaulting" a Chinese servant. The Reds' kangaroo court sentenced the five to jail for three to six months, imposed a stiff fine, then suspended the sentences and ordered them deported.

Despite the State Department's flaccid indecisiveness in the whole affair, the Chinese Communists had apparently bowed to international indignation and, more important, to their desire for diplomatic recognition and the right to represent China in the U.N. Ward's release came only a day after the U.S. appealed to 30 nations (including Russia) for help in freeing the consul general and his aides.

But the Communists did not yield without slapping the U.S. in the face once again. At week's end, as Ward and his staff tried to arrange for transport out of China, Communist police descended on the consulate, made off with young (26)

Vice Consul William N. Stokes and forced him to watch the trial of ten Japanese, Chinese and Koreans accused of "spying" for the U.S. No Americans were on trial, but that did not bother the people's court. Its verdict: the entire staff of the U.S. consulate would be deported along with Angus Ward.

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