Ferocious, Aerocious War

Sticking pins into a map of China became last week a more exciting game than many another. A big black-headed pin was appropriate to pierce the spot where a high Chinese official had his nose cut off and his eyes gouged out. Only a shining white-headed pin would do to show where a U. S. doctor was shot down trying to save some Chinese young women from rape. Finally a whole packet of pins could have been used up on Chinese towns where bloodshed, starvation and atrocious cruelty held sway. Shrewd pinners pierced the following places as most significant amid the rapidly unfolding Chinese civil war and Japanese intervention:

Tsinan, the capital of Shantung province, was captured from the troops of Peking Dictator Chang Tso-Lin last week by the armies of the Nanking Nationalist Government. The Peking troops fled to positions on the northern bank of the Yellow River; but meanwhile the Nanking soldiers had become embroiled with Japanese troops who had come up from Tsing Tao to guard the Tsinan Japanese colony.

Using light tanks and artillery, the Japanese inflicted more than 1,000 casualties but sustained only 41. They claimed that the Nanking soldiers gave provocation for this punishment by looting in the Japanese quarter and by raping Japanese women. The Nankingese declared that the Japanese had not only fired upon them without provocation but had seized Nanking Special Commissioner Tsai-Kung-Sze, cut off his nose, gouged out his eyes, shot him dead and burned down a building over him.

Observers remembered that Japan is friendly to Peking and seized upon the essential fact that the Japanese cannonade made it impossible for the Nankingese to follow up their victory over the Pekingese. These latter were thus able to recover from their headlong flight last week and took up strong positions to defend Peking.

Tsining is the seat of a hospital and school maintained by the United States Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions. Last week, details finally emerged as to the recent murder of Hospital Superintendent Dr. Walter F. Seymour (TIME, May 7). It appeared that when Nationalist troops took Tsining recently on their victorious march to Tsinan (see above) a group of Nationalist soldiers rushed for the women's dormitory of the mission school with intent to possess themselves of its occupants. When kindly Dr. Seymour sought to bar the dormitory door with his slender body the soldiers shot him down.

Shanghai holds one of the highest places among the ports of the world in normal volume of shipping. Its customs dues are the one large and reliable source of income possessed by the Nanking Nationalists. Last week the native quarter of Shanghai was ineffectively bombed by hand grenades thrown from two hydroplanes belonging to Peking Dictator Chang Tso-Lin. The planes operated from the Peking cruiser Haichi which suddenly appeared before the Woosung forts, fired a few tentative broadsides and scuttled off to sea.

Shantung Province is suffering from a famine brought on by drought (TIME, Feb. 6) which menaces the lives of ten million Chinese.