Outrage, Conference

Father W. A. Fletcher, a mission priest, and seven Roman Catholic nuns set out last week from Kongmoon aboard the steamer Waihoi. As they bobbed peacefully over the South China sea, twelve of the ship's passengers suddenly revealed themselves as armed pirates, seized the ship, and ran her aground for convenient looting.

Father Fletcher and the nuns were robbed of their valuables and locked up together by the pirates in a single narrow stateroom. The ship was glutted and the Chinese passengers were carried off to be held for ransom. Then for two days a total of 21 separate bandit gangs visited the Waihoi to glean what leavings they could. The last band found Father Fletcher and the nuns possessed of nothing but their shoes, took them.

Eventually the captain of another steamer boarded the Waihoi, unlocked the stateroom in which Father Fletcher and the nuns had been locked up by the last bandit gang. As the whole party returned to Kongmoon, Sister Monica (the onetime Miss Alice Moffitt of Fall River, Mass.) was quoted: "We were treated with the utmost brutality. Four of the Sisters are in a serious condition."

Super-Tuchun Chang Tso-lin of North China conferred last week at Tientsin with Super-Tuchun Sun Chuan-feng of Shanghai which is now on the verge of capture by the Cantonese (TIME, Oct. 25).

Chang reputedly agreed to dispatch 150,000 troops to Sun's aid. During the Conference Dr. Wellington Koo, "Handyman of Chinese Politics," tried to resign as Premier, Foreign Minister and general factotum of China, but was curtly commanded by Chang to keep up the farce. He quit, nevertheless. Throughout China, foreigners paled before the prospects of anarchy.