Cocky Wang

Quick on the rebound is the Nationalist Government of President Chiang Kaishek. Less than a month ago the Nationalists were fighting desperately for their very existence; no one knew who would rule China from one day to the next. Last week, their authority temporarily reestablished, the Nationalists dusted their jackets, straightened their horn-rimmed spectacles, strutted again. Cocky Cheng Ting ("C. T.") Wang, Nationalist Foreign Minister, blandly disregarding riot and rebellion, announced that with the first of the year he would abolish the right of extraterritoriality in China, i.e. the right of foreign residents in China to be tried by their own consular courts.

Startled by cocky Minister Wang, U. S. Secretary of State Henry Lewis Stimson contented himself with pointing out that the present treaty guaranteeing U. S. extraterritorial privileges does not come up for revision, cannot be abrogated, until 1934.

Far from complacent was James Louis Garvin, editor of London's Sunday Observer and the Encyclopedia Britannica. Warned he: "In a few weeks at the furthest this vast problem will begin to tower over every other issue, and may affect parties and politics like nothing since the World War."

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