Adroit Chiang

With a smile that was childlike and bland Chiang Kaishek, famed first President of the Nationalist Government, arrived in Nanking last week. A thousand chastened members of the Kuomintang party assembled to welcome him. Only six weeks ago these same men forced him to resign the Presidency. He left and his opponents shouted to the winds that they were heartily glad to be rid of him.

They forgot a few facts. Smiling Chiang's brother-in-law, spectacled Dr. T. V. Soong, is China's No. 1 banker and reputedly the only Finance Minister since the Revolution who has been able to get enough money together to run a central government. Smiling Chiang was still the most powerful military leader in China. The temporary government under pudgy Cantonese "Premier" Dr. Sun Fo could get nowhere. It was forced to beg Chiang Kai-shek to return. That he did last week as acknowledged head of the Chinese Army. Next move was the resignation of Sun Fo. He took with him Foreign Minister Eugene Chen, received promises of support from General Shen Ming-shu, commander of the troops stationed in Shanghai. Sneered Chen: "The conference at Nanking reminds one of a people facing conquest. Chiang Kai-shek is ready to tell Japan to go as far as she likes." But General Chiang, with his Cantonese enemies out of the way, once more had the government ready to move when he pulled the strings. Wrote New York Sun Correspondent Edgar Snow: "Chiang Kai-shek . . . has executed one of the most adroit political intrigues ever witnessed in China."

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