Triumphal Return

A frank, alert and quizzical air is characteristic of the young U. S. Minister to China, John Van Antwerp MacMurray. Last week he entered Peking amid circumstances sufficiently triumphal to have made a lesser diplomat turn smug. During the past month he has been "down South" in Shanghai, negotiating with the Nanking Nationalist Government a settlement of the claims of U. S. citizens arising out of the "Nanking Outrage" of last year (TIME, April 4), when much U. S. property was looted by Chinese and one U. S. citizen killed. That Minister MacMurray had successfully concluded these negotiations became known recently, but not until last week did he steam back "up North" on the U. S. cruiser Marblehead and received in Peking the congratulations of virtually all his fellow diplomats.

This triumphal return was set off and made the more notable by a furious counterblast of criticism from the British press of Hongkong. There the South China Post, the China Mail and the Hongkong Telegraph all insinuated that Minister MacMurray had settled on "too lenient terms," in order that the U. S. Republican party might point to a diplomatic victory on the eve of a U. S. presidential election.

Careful inspection of the British criticisms, however, showed that they were mainly based on an early and erroneous Chinese version of the MacMurray settlement. According to this report the U. S. Minister had "apologized" to the Chinese Nanking Government because during the "Nanking Outrage" two U. S. war vessels fired upon the city. The true facts of the case were not known until last week, when the U. S. State Department released the verbatim text of the MacMurray settlement, which consists of six notes exchanged between the U. S. Minister and Nationalist Foreign Minister Hwang Fu. Therein the U. S. explicitly declares that the firing upon Nanking by the U. S. war vessels Noa and Preston "was in fact a protective barrage, strictly confined to the immediate neighborhood of the house in which the American Consul and his family and staff, together with many others, had been driven to seek refuge from the assaults of an unrestrained soldiery; and not only did it provide the only conceivable means by which the lives of this party were saved from the danger that immediately threatened them, but it also made possible the evacuation of the other Americans residing at Nanking, who were in actual peril of their lives.

"The American Government, therefore, feels that its naval vessels had no alternative to the action taken, however deep ly it deplores that circumstances beyond its control should have necessitated the adoption of such measures for the protection of the lives of its citizens at Nanking."

Certainly such words do not constitute "apology."

Further scanning of the settlement reveals that the Nanking Government explicitly "undertakes to make compensation in full for all personal injuries and material damages done to the American Consulate and to its officials and to American residents and their property at Nanking."

Such terms do not seem "too lenient." Rather they suggest that Minister Mac-Murray succeeded better in his negotiation than did, recently, the British Minister to China Sir Miles Wedderburn Lampson who has failed or refused to settle the British claims arising out of the "Nanking Outrage."