Old Testament

"Has the Government started something it is not going to finish?" angrily at Nanking last week boomed massive "Christian General" Feng Yu-hsiang who, born a peasant and still a peasant, delights to shame more refined Chinese officials when he can. There was last week no getting around the fact that the Nanking Government had sent out orders to begin executing on New Year's Day Chinese caught selling, buying or smoking opium, and that beginning New Year's Day nobody had been executed for that crime (TIME, Jan. 11). This, according to the Christian Marshal, was outrageous. With Old Testament fervor he demanded that the Chinese Government, many of whose members are decidedly New Testament, finish up with wholesale death what they had started. Over 100,000 addicts had been slated for execution in Peiping alone.

"No addicts are entitled to further delay --I urge immediate executions!" shouted Feng, banging his peasant fist. "I myself have a cousin who, after 40 years of opium smoking, cured himself of this habit at the age of 62. Others can do likewise if they are determined!" As the Generalissimo and Premier of China, Chiang Kaishek, was not answering the telephone or reading his mail or telegrams during the week, the Christian Marshal could only browbeat lesser officials and they timidly tried to appease him with just a little death. After Feng had stormed for hours, Peiping police produced a half-frozen individual by the name of Lu Ju-hsin, saying they had caught him on a bicycle with 60 ounces of narcotics.

His death was personally ordered by the local military satrap, General Sung Cheh-yuan. Shackled behind a motor car, the prisoner was dragged through the streets of Peiping while buglers blew their loudest and policemen beat up anyone who tried to use a camera. End came near the Peiping garbage dump. There 10,000 people watched the frost-nipped Lu Ju-hsin as he was forced to a kneeling position. Up behind him stepped a snappy Chinese soldier, placed the muzzle of a pistol against the back of the prisoner's head, killed him with a single bullet.

Recently-kidnapped Premier Chiang rested in quiet retirement this week and his recent kidnapper, young Marshal Chang Hsueh-liang, although pardoned by the Nanking Government (TIME Jan. 11) was still under such extremely heavy guard last week that it was difficult to say whether or not he was in custody.

He was once more the "guest" of Banker T. V. Soong (TIME, Jan. 4) and last week played around the Nanking Country Club golf course accompanied by soldiers carrying eight submachine guns "in readiness." The city of Sian. scene of the kidnapping, was reported in unconfirmed dispatches to have been taken over by a Chinese Communist army, and jittery Japanese continued to fear that the Premier's fantastic kidnapping and its fantastic sequels were largely a blind to distract world attention from a drawing together of Chiang's China and Stalin's Russia for united war on Japan.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.