First President

CHINA

First President

Because General George Washington fought the Revolutionary War to a smart finish, Americans thought he would make a good peacetime President, nor were they disappointed. Precisely similar was the reasoning of Chinese, last week, when they chose the first President of the new Chinese Nationalist Government (TIME, May 2, 1927). Naturally and inevitably their choice fell upon the Nationalist Revolution's doughty "Man of Victory," famed Marshal Chiang Kai-shek.

The new President was not elected by the Chinese people. Most of them have never seen a ballot, and millions have never heard of one. The 17 years of political ferment through which China has passed since the collapse of the Manchu Empire in 1911, have left the nation with nothing so advanced as an electorate. Therefore Marshal Chiang Kai-shek was elected last week by the Central Executive Council of the Nationalist Party, to serve as "President of the Government." Not for a long, weary while will it be possible to democratically elect a "President of China." For the present, the Nationalists --who have just wrested China from the grip of the various bandit "war lords"-- are frankly constituting themselves as a benevolent oligarchy--with the blessing and full recognition of the U. S. Government (TIME, Aug. 6).

Appropriately President Chiang was inaugurated, last week, on the day called "Double Ten"--the anniversary of that historic "tenth day of the tenth month" (1911) when Chinese patriots exploded a bomb at Hankow which was the signal for uprising that toppled down the Dragon Throne. Last week "Double Ten" was joyously celebrated at the bomb town of Hankow with a splendid procession of water floats on the mighty River Yangtze. Lantern-light processions and patriotic fetes were held in all the major cities of China, last week -- especially at Shanghai, where citizens were doubly jubilant because Chinese census takers had just announced that Shanghai is now the sixth largest metropolis in the world (2,726,046). Celebrants in many a Chinacity and Chinatown applauded floats from which bobbed haired "Girls of the Revolution" flaunted the red, blue and white Nationalist flag and cried shrilly "China for the Chinese!"

Contrastingly dignified was the solemn investiture and swearing in of President Chiang Kai-shek. Since religion has been utterly divorced from Nationalism, no Bible or other symbol of the supernatural was in evidence. The new Chief Executive simply bowed three times before a portrait of the late Dr. Sun Yat-sen (founder of the Nationalist Party), swore to uphold Dr. Sun's famed Three Nationalist Principles, and finally invoked three times as a potent witness the spirit of SUN YATSEN. When President Chiang had thus sworn, he was followed in the same ritual by five lesser Presidents, each of whom will administer one of the five Yuans into which the Nationalists have now divided China for executive purposes.

Correspondents who sought out the new President found the same slender, abstemious, almost frail Chiang Kai-shek of old. As Marshal and Generalissimo of all the Nationalist Armies his uniform was always that of a private, completely unadorned. Last week as President of the Government he received callers in austerest garb, after doffing his plain, dark, silken robe of office. Coldly, firmly, he said:

"The military phase of the Nationalist Revolution is victoriously terminated. Everything now depends upon a continued spirit of unity among the people and within the Party. . . . Party members, when dissatisfied with any branch of the National Administration, should first advance their views in a friendly spirit in the expectation that it will be accepted. Failing this they may try the proper recourse through party headquarters. When such measure again fails, pressure may be brought to bear upon the Central Executive Committee of the party to reorganize the whole Government. But on no occasion shall party members attempt directly to interfere with the administration of the Government."

So dry and full of cogent wisdom were the President's remarks, that only persons of lively imagination realized that in the precise little man before them they beheld the greatest and most romantic Conqueror of today. All of vast China has been his battlefield, and from South to North he has conquered or reduced all to submission. Geographically the arena of Marshal Chiang's triumph dwarfs to insignificance that in which was fought the Great War-- for China is four times as large as the total battle areas of Europe, with the Balkans thrown in. From the standpoint of manpower and gunpower the comparison of course, reverses itself; but none the less Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek commanded at one time not less than a third of a million armed Chinamen. From the short belt, which girdles his slender waist, hang, metaphorically, the scalps of a dozen conquered War Lords, among them that of the once dread Chang Tso-lin, who for a decade held Manchuria, and who dominated all North China from his barbaric Court at Peking. Last week the son of defeated and assassinated Marshal Chang Tso-lin, young Chang Hsuch-liang, was reported to have hoisted the Nationalist flag over Manchuria and to have sworn fealty to Nationalism.

Life came to President Chiang Kai-shek 41 years ago in the minute village of Fenghwa in Chekiang Province. After running away from being apprenticed to a merchant he managed to win a military scholarship and embraced the career of arms under the doomed Dragon Throne. When patriotic bombs began to pop, Chiang Kai-shek (then a stripling of 24) secured command of a revolutionary brigade in Shanghai and lived for several months the gay life of a looter, profligate --drunken and debauched. Suddenly he cut short this spree and when convivial friends assembled to remonstrate he cried: ''You are my friends! My friends? Bah! I have given up your kind of life to give my real services to my country. . . . You are not MY friends. Get out!"

Presumably Young Chiang's utter change of principle resulted from his having been drawn into the orbit of Dr. Sun Yatsen, great and pure apostle of the Chinese Democracy that is yet to be. After winning Dr. Sun's confidence by brilliant service in the field, Chiang became his private secretary and served devotedly through all the vicissitudes of the South China Republic, founded by Dr. Sun at Canton. When the Great Leader died in 1925, Disciple Chiang Kai-shek had just completed an arrangement with the Russian Soviet Government whereby millions of rubles were furnished to equip the Nationalist Army in Canton and launch it upon a northward conquest of all China.

For perhaps the first time in history a great army moved forward preceded by an army of spies and trained propagandists scarcely less great. Towns and garrisons which had grown restive under the exactions of the War Lords were induced to revolt spontaneously and went over to the Nationalists as Generalissimo Chiang's armies approached. Largely by such means and with very little fighting the Southern half of China was absorbed by Nationalism in barely two months! (TIME, Oct. 18, 1926). Not long after this staggering initial success, shrewd Chiang Kai-shek broke absolutely with the Soviet backers of the Nationalist Revolution, and today no man is oftener reviled and burned in effigy at Moscow than he -- except perhaps Great Britain's gaunt, bemonocled Foreign Secretary Sir Austen Chamberlain.

To complete the conquest of China required some 20 months and pitted the Nationalist Generalissimo against the strongest armies and keenest brains which a coalition of Northern War Lords could fling against him in a Death struggle to retain their power. This part of Chiang's saga should be told at epic length, for it was marked by heroic vicissitudes. At one time, sorely defeated, the Generalissimo resigned his command and retired to his native village (TIME, Aug. 22, 1927). Within a few months he had cheered up, married a sister of the surviving widow of Dr. Sun Yatsen, and was seen victoriously back in the fray. Just as Russia had supplied the cash and propaganda to assist Chiang in conquering South China, so a new ally appeared to lend crushing weight to Nationalism's conquest of the North. This new ally was (and is) the so-called "Christian" Marshal Feng Yu-hsiang, master of the largest private army in the world (195,000 men). With Marshal Feng's potent aid, Marshal Chiang accomplished the capture of Peking last Spring (TIME, June 4); and since then, with all China at least nominally subservient to Nationalism, the emergence of Chiang Kai-shek as "President of the Government" has been a matter of logical sequence which has now reached its inevitable Q. E. D.