Loyalties & Tears

Happiest dream of a Chinese is of China fighting Japan and winning. Last month hotheaded southern warlords of Kwangtung and Kwangsi Provinces notified Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek that he must either declare war at once on Japan or be prepared to stop their armies from marching northward, in the general direction of Japan, the immediate direction of Chiang's capital at Nanking. What looked to the Chinese masses like the long-awaited war with Japan was soon revealed to be just plain old-fashioned civil war, as Chiang's Press asserted that the ostensibly anti-Japanese Southerners had actually received Japanese guns, planes and cash. Last week a Chinese maelstrom of bribes, manifestoes, circular telegrams and tentative skirmishes reached its climax.

Chiang's master stroke had been to keep bargaining with the Southerners until after his Nationalist Central Executive Committee had met in Nanking. There last fortnight, with an appearance of democratic, parliamentary unanimity, they were forced by Chiang to outlaw the South's front man, General Chen Chi-tang, popular, slow-witted Big Boss of Canton. Meanwhile Chiang had found the weak link in Chen's army of 500,000 men--a subsidiary war lord in immediate command of Chen's shock troops of the First Kwangtung Army. This traitorous officer was coaxed to Nanking, appointed to Chen's job and rushed back to his First Army on the northern Kwangtung border. There he wheeled his army about, marched towards Canton to take over his new job.

This meant that if the rest of Chen's men ventured to stand and fight, they were obliged to fight fellow-Kwangtungese. At this the Kwangtung Army fell completely apart. Dozens of Chen's chief officers, civil officials, his entire Cantonese air force of 60 planes, two torpedo boats and even the man he had picked for president of an independent Southwest Government fled the province. Wired one officer to dismayed General Chen: "Despite the danger of having my heart dissected and my eyes gouged out by you, I hereby dare to send you this final word of my loyalty. Alas, as I hold my pen, how fast the tears stream down my cheeks. I respectfully entreat you to carefully examine my words and forgive my impoliteness." What had brought Chen's officers to this impoliteness was the arrival in Chen's camp of some 200 Japanese military advisers and airplane pilots.

When at last the soldiers in the ranks refused to fight, Chen knew he was beaten. He told Chiang, through an emissary, that he would quit if Chiang would give him a high-sounding title under which he could honorably travel abroad. That night his Second Kwangtung Army having surrendered, Chen scuttled to a British gunboat, headed for British Hongkong where he has a tidy investment in real estate.

This week the troops of Nanking, shooing the Kwangsi troops out of the way, marched into Canton, took it over in the name of the Nationalist Government. The collapse of the great Southwest rebellion was highly discouraging to Japanese, who landed marines near Canton "to protect Japanese lives and property."

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