Bad News

The conquest of all China by Marshal (now President) Chiang Kai-shek was completed almost a year ago (TIME, June 25), but last week a big and a little piece of bad news made it seem that Mr. Chiang must lay down his presidential fountain pen, gird on his old sword and Mauser pistol, and sally forth from Nanking to conquer all over again two great provinces. Shantung and Hunan.

Each became last week the theatre of a miniature civil war. Troops loyal to President Chiang battled with disaffected soldiery left over from the old regimes of the detested war lords who held sway over China like robber barons before the Nationalist conquest. To picture the situation in terms of U. S. geography, imagine President Chiang in New Orleans (Nanking) hearing that civil war has broken out on the North Atlantic seaboard (in Shantung), and also far inland on a tributary of the Mississippi (in Hunan). China's North Atlantic is the Yellow Sea, and her Mississippi is the great Yangtze-Kiang.

Chang of Shantung. The big bad news of last week was that detested and notorious Chang Tsung-Chang, onetime rapacious war lord of Shantung was back in his old province and battling for possession of it with 26,000 ragged, nondescript troops.

Chinese thought and devoutly hoped they had seen the last of Chang Tsung-Chang and his fat well-chewed cigars when the Nationalist armies chased him into Manchuria (TIME, Sept. 24), after which he settled down in the Japanese city of Dairen (near Port Arthur) with his 35 women and foreign bank deposits of $10,000,000 (TIME, Feb. 11).

Last week Chang chartered a tramp steamer and stepped aboard her at Dairen, with 250 hired soldiers of fortune including the "White Russian" General Ataman Seminov. Without the slightest hindrance from the Japanese port authorities the tramp steamer cleared, wallowed out into the Gulf of Chili, and steamed the short 100 miles to the Chinese port of Teng-chowfu in Shantung. There Chang landed amidst a rabble army of soldiers who had served him as war lord. All night long they labored, with many a grin, unloading from the tramp steamer rifles, machine guns, light artillery.

Chang's landing and the consolidation of his forces could not be prevented by the Nationalists, because he had put in at a point on the Shantung peninsula which is fenced off from the rest of China by an expeditionary force of Japanese marines. These tough sliteyes have been where they are a long time, and, as in Nicaragua, "the purpose of the Marines is to protect lives and property," according to the Imperial Government at Tokyo. During the week only one small body of 7,000 Nationalist troops were able to maneuver around the Japanese within striking distance of Chang & mercenaries.

Citizens of the U. S. resident at Chefoo, not far away on the Shantung Coast heard firing, and presently four auto trucks piled with Nationalist wounded dashed into the city. No correspondent dared venture out into the battle area, and when Nationalist officials in Chefoo announced a "sweeping victory" they were gravely suspected of exaggeration. From Manila the U. S. cruiser Trenton set out for Chefoo, where three Japanese destroyers and one British gunboat already lay.

Lu of Hunan. The little bad news of last week was that Governor General Lu of Ti-Ping of Hunan Province had been driven from his capital, Changsha, a city of 535,800, by insurgent forces under one General Yeh Chi. Lu, flying for his life, left behind a personal treasure of $500,000, quickly seized by Yeh.