Pax Britannica (3rd Class)

Inside the British Consulate at Shanghai last week, closely guarded by His Majesty's Marines in full war regalia, sat an aristocratic Old Etonian, Sir Miles Wedderburn Lampson.

Years ago he accepted from the Emperor of Japan both the Order of the Rising Sun (3rd class) and the Order of the Sacred Treasure (3rd class). Since 1926 he has been British Minister to China, and soon after Japan struck at Shanghai (TIME, Feb. 1) handsome, trim-mustached Sir Miles began trying to make peace. On his desk last week lay the makings: an agreement in English ready to be initialed by the plenipotentiaries of China. Japan and the Great Powers providing for Japanese evacuation. Picking up a pen, Sir Miles initialed the agreement first himself, then sent it to the hospitals where three of the Oriental signers lay painfully in beds.

A Japanese surgeon had just cut out the right eyeball of Vice Admiral Kichisaburo Nomura. Another surgeon was waiting to cut off the right leg of Japanese Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu--both men having been wounded by the Korean bomb thrown fortnight ago during a Japanese military and naval review at Shanghai (TIME, May 9). Propped up in bed and waiting for his leg to be cut at the knee, Minister Shigemitsu smiled with heroic Japanese courtesy at Director of Intelligence Samuel Chang whom the Chinese Government had sent to witness his signature.

"Tell your people--tell the Chinese people," said the ashen-lipped Japanese Minister. "I dearly wish that we shall be at peace!"

Samuel Chang approached the bed, made as though to shake Minister Shigemitsu's right hand, drew back when he saw it was bandaged.

"Here, shake my left hand!" cried the game little Japanese, and as they shook he patted Samuel Chang's hand with his bandaged right. At 1:14 p.m. Minister Shigemitsu signed the agreement, lost his leg two hours later, received a blood transfusion, was described by his Japanese surgeon as "in a condition not quite hopeless."

Samuel Chang, taking no chances, took the agreement to his chief, Chinese Foreign Vice Minister Quo Taichi, not in a glittering Government limousine but in a ramshackle Chinese taxi with its old-fashioned shades tightly drawn. This precaution was necessary because Shanghai citizens instinctively suspected that the Old Etonian and the wounded Japanese were trying to put something over on China. Mere announcement that the agreement was to be signed had sent 100 Chinese students hot-footing it into the French Concession where they burst into the home of prospective Chinese Signer Quo.

"Toad-in-the-slime!" screamed the students. "You have betrayed China!"

Before Mr. Quo could answer a student threw a plate which gashed him just above the eye. Other students pitched in, knocked Mr. Quo down, beat and kicked him, would have killed China's Signer had not French police arrived.

Terms of the Pax Britannica signed at Shanghai:

1) The Japanese forces are to withdraw within four weeks from the Woosung Forts and other occupied areas around Shanghai. Japan began this withdrawal promptly last week.

2) The Chinese Government's troops are to hold their present positions some 20 miles from Shanghai while a joint commission (set up under the agreement) supervises the Japanese withdrawal and certifies that it has taken place.

3) The Chinese Government is to assign a special constabulary to police the evacuated area.

To this truce U. S. Minister Nelson Trusler Johnson contributed not only his initials but a friendly statement: "I believe that the agreement means an early return to normality. Both parties are to be congratulated on their forbearance."

Thus Minister Johnson turned the other cheek to 60 Japanese bluejackets who the night previous had climbed the high, spiked gate of the International Settlement near Soochow Creek and rushed with fixed bayonets upon a Chinese crowd technically under the protection of the 31st U. S. Infantry. Lunging at these Chinese civilians the Japanese bluejackets wounded ten with bayonet thrusts, knocked down eleven more with blows from their rifle butts and climbed back over the high, spiked gate as the 31st U. S. Infantry rushed upon the scene. Tersely a Japanese spokesman explained that the bluejackets had acted to "punish" Chinese who had been making faces, hurling stones and obscenities from the supposed safety of the International Settlement.

Chinese Pandemonium broke loose when, day after the Pax Britannica was initialed, the Chinese Government of Marshal Chiang Kai-shek telegraphed orders to Chinese mayors and garrison commanders to suppress promptly and at once any anti-Japanese societies or other boycott groups in their districts.*

All China assumed that this order was what Japan and Old Etonian Sir Miles Wedderburn Lampson had put over--that it was Japan's secret price for agreeing to evacuate. Raging mad, prominent Chinese sent telegrams from Peiping, Tientsin, Canton, Hankow and Shanghai demanding that the Chinese Government at Nanking resign, accusing its members of "betraying China."

Experimentally the Government let Foreign Vice Minister Quo (who signed for China) resign, waited to see if kicking Quo would appease the nation's wrath.

Leading Japanese newspapers featured brazenly last week a story that Great Britain's helpful attitude toward Japan has been due to "fear that the Japanese Navy might seize both Hong Kong and Singapore which Great Britain could not defend at present." (The famed British naval base at Singapore is incomplete. James Ramsay MacDonald is a Pacifist. Overtaxed Britons are in no mood to pay the cost of fighting Japan.)

* China's boycott of Japanese goods has reduced trade between the two countries 53%, according to Japanese statistics released at Tokyo last week. Japanese exports have been off as much as 81%, had picked up considerably between the time fighting ceased and last week.

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