Shanghai, China's Verdun

Act 1 of the Shanghai tragedy ended with a quick curtain which remained down for four hours. Two men tugged the curtain down, negotiated with Japanese and Chinese officers the four-hour truce. Tugger Father Jacquinot is Rector of Shanghai's St. Francis Xavier College, lost an arm at Verdun, France. Tugger Lieut.-Colonel Francis Hayley Bell, retired, is British, indomitable.

With his daughter, Lieut.-Colonel Bell rushed into the smoking, crumbling ruins of ''No Man's Land" (the Chinese Chapei District) and in rushed Father Jacquinot with 13 nuns. Other good people offered their help. By heroic efforts, working against time (four hours) they evacuated scores of wounded men and women, piling them hastily into six motor ambulances.

In all 2,000 Chinese men, women and children escaped during the four-hour truce from the smoking ruins of Chapei, where they had somehow existed through the 17 days since the first Japanese shells and bombs set all Chapei afire.

If heroism, mercy and ingenuity guided the Good People, greed, extortion and ingenuity guided the Bad People. Thus $3 is a huge sum, and always has been, to some of Chapei's desperate poor, yet $3 was extorted again and again by Chinese sampanmen to ferry a refugee across the 60-ft. wide Soochow Creek to doubtful safety.

Punctually the curtain rang up. Japanese and Chinese officials charged each other with having violated the four-hour truce in various ways. As the shells began to scream again, as the roar of bombing planes played its soft prelude to the thunder of bombs, act II began, and the first actor to speak was Rear-Admiral Toma Uematsu. commander of the Japanese naval landing forces.

"Never again," said this Japanese Admiral, ''will we agree to any such truce proposal. Never again!"

China's "Verdun," (with which Father Jacquinot had nothing to do), consisted last week of the heroic defense of the Woosung Forts, 16 miles from Shanghai proper. But there were altogether too many mysteries in connection with China's "Verdun"'--Oriental mysteries.

Neither the Japanese nor Chinese communiques (statements of fact; agreed with each other in any particular, except that Japan did not actually hold possession of the forts.

No less than eleven Japanese transports bearing 20,000 fresh Japanese troops (who discreetly remained out of sight) steamed past the Woosung Forts without so much as a rifle being fired at them. Yet the whole world knew and Shanghai knew, and presumably the Chinese at Woosung knew what was on those ships.

Generals at last! Correspondents were delighted to have some Japanese Generals to write about last week, having grown tired of writing about Japanese Admirals. The emotions of the New York Times correspondent when General Uyeda arrived to take over all Japanese land operations last week were notable. "General Uyeda," cabled the correspondent, "is an extremely attractive personality. He is of medium height, is slender, nearly bald and speaks no English. Under a straggling, iron grey mustache, he Hashes frequent smiles, revealing teeth rimmed with gold."

Japanese officers at Shanghai, far from being unworried paragons of arrogance, had all kinds of Japanese political possibilities to worry about (see p. 20 i. They worried not much about General Tsai Ting-kai. Commander-in-Chief of the Chinese defending forces.

Shanghai, China's Largest City, should have been defended last week by one or all of China's "great generals" (great only in ravaging the Chinese people and waging civil wars to steal each other's loot). Not one of these uniformed bandits could be found in or near Shanghai last week--not Feng Yu-hsiang ("The Christian General"), not Yen Hsi-shan ("The Model Governor"), not even Chiang Kaishek, who only four years ago was "The Conqueror of all China" (see col. 3).

Shanghai's defender is the son of retired Chinese Admiral Tsai who was forced to quit New Britain, Conn. High School upon the complaint of the Chinese Minister in Washington to the Imperial Throne that he was "studying Latin and Greek and other unnecessary subjects." Son Ting-kai, 16, enlisted in a Chinese army but was taught by his father, Admiral Tsai, to devote every spare moment to the Arts, and has done so. He has therefore had a completely undistinguished military career, had the post of Commander-in-Chief thrust upon him. Last week the Commander-in-Chief paid no attention to whether his officers or soldiers saluted him or not. A staff officer said of the Commander: "He believes that a nation of real poets could beat a nation of goose- steppers. That is what he believes and he always carries with him at least two books of poetry."

Swinging belatedly to the Poet-Warrior's aid, Conqueror-of-all-China Chiang Kai-shek dispatched a crack regiment called "Chiang's Own" to Shanghai, these picked Chinese soldiers all having rifles, complete equipment, steel helmets and their own artillery unit.

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