Simmering

Chen Chien Routed. The only notable military action of the week occurred when Chiang Kaishek, onetime Generalissimo of all the Southern Nationalist armies, now War Lord of Shanghai and Nanking (TIME, March 28 et seq.) surrounded and captured 5,000 men commanded by his onetime subordinate, General Chen Chien. Despatches indicated that General Chen will be offered up to the Powers by General Chiang as a "Red" who, on his own responsibility, ordered and carried out the so-called "atrocities" against Occidentals at Nanking (TIME, April 4).

Britain v. U. S. Experienced U. S. correspondents in China were virtually unanimous last week in cabling their opinion that the British Government and officials of the U. S. Legation at Peking are in harmony behind a policy of armed intervention in China; whereas U. S. Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg again made clear at Washington last week, that the Coolidge administration is determined to avoid intervention in China. At Shanghai, British resentment prompted an article entitled "Washington Deserts Her Allies," in the North China Daily News, chief British news organ in China. Most injudiciously, the lurid caption of this article was displayed in the streets on placards. Chinese read, shuffled on. . . .

Said the article:

"A responsible authority speaking for the American Legation says that American officialdom in China has been abominably treated by the Washington Administration. Consular and diplomatic reports have furnished more than enough material to shape public opinion in America if the Government cared to face conditions honestly by giving out the information at its disposal.

Instead, the Administration suppresses the facts and smugly pre tends to follow public opinion. The Peking community, unites in the conviction that the indifference indicates a national decadence as a result of overprosperity. The last straw, in the official view, is the suggestion to Washington from Admiral Charles S. Williams-- that the American Legation should be removed from Peking to Shanghai.

"Great Britain alone is preparing to suppress anarchy along the Yangtze. British naval officials have worked out a punitive scheme which is understood to have been submitted to London for approval, but which has not yet been sanctioned by Great Britain."

Powell Censured. Finally the resentment of Britons and U. S. citizens in China against the Coolidge Administration boiled over and the American Chamber of Commerce of Shanghai met and demanded resignation from its membership of the China Weekly Review, the sole U. S. owned newspaper in Shanghai. Its editor, John B. Powell of Hannibal, Mo., felt obliged late last week to re-sign as president of a prominent Chino-British-U. S. Shanghai club. For what was he thus censured?

In the editorial columns of his paper, Editor Powell had written: "The Chamber of Commerce apparently believes in involving America in complications in this part of the world, which, in my opinion, may have a far-reaching effect, even to the extent of another World War.

"I believe the Chinese have the right to express their views as well as the English or Americans, or others, and so long as I am engaged in the publication of an Amer-icn paper in Shanghai it is my intention to give them a square deal.

"The American people have no business to interfere in the internal affairs of the Chinese."