Soothsayers' Year

Glumly on the first day of spring last week, Celestials read almost unanimous forecasts by China's most esteemed soothsayers that in 1937 will break "The Big War" between their country and Japan. What clinched this soothsaying in many Chinese minds last week was the appointment in Tokyo of a sword-handy Cabinet which proceeded to squelch the Japanese Diet. New Japanese Premier General Hayashi is known and hated throughout China as "The Border Crosser." Reason: in 1931 his troops were the first Japanese unit to cross the border from Korea, invading Chinese Manchuria, the larger part of which Japan has now turned into her puppet Empire of Manchukuo.

Optimistic were the 1937 economic surveys of China's great Shanghai banks. They pointed out that New Year's is the day on which Chinese businessmen expect each other to have all outstanding debts settled, rejoiced that 1937's dread "settlement day" last week brought not a single Shanghai business or bank failure. As every Chinese shivers to recall, the 1935 and 1936 settlement days bristled with seemingly catastrophic bankruptcies, "but China, like England, always muddles through."

The muddling through in northwest China last week was more a case of bloodling through. For the past five years China has had a compact, mobile, self-styled "Red State"--a vast semi-bandit group of Chinese Communists under able native Red generals, propagandists and administrators who in 1931 had established a Provisional Government in a large splotch of China some 200 miles in diameter, perilously close to the Chinese Government at Nanking (see map). This Red State today can be roughly compared to those of such old-time Asiatic nomad conquerors as Genghis Khan, whose traveling bureaucrats pitched their tents and unraveled their red tape wherever the Great Khan's soldiers had blazed the way. Since 1934 the Red State has been "driven" or has "advanced"--according to the point of view--ahead of so-called Anti-Communist Bandit Suppression Forces dispatched by Chinese Premier & Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek.

The Red State, twisting and turning in its 2,000 miles of migration, arrived more than a year ago in Chinese regions sufficiently remote to permit many of these Chinese Communists, mostly farmers, to take some welcome respite and more or less settle down in three large blotches with a total area today of perhaps 80,000 sq. mi. Last week this Red State was spectacularly absorbing many soldiers once commanded by Young Marshal Chang Hsueh-liang, recently kidnapper of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (TIME, Dec. 21 et seq.) and war lord of Manchuria until the Japanese drove him out (TIME, Sept. 28, 1931). Worse still, last week the deserters of the Young Marshal's standard were killing their officers, as many of these were not so eager as their men to go Red.

Butchered by his soldiers at Sian last week was memorable General Wang Ichi. In 1931 he was one of the very few Manchurian generals to offer brave resistance to the battling and bribing Japanese. Butchered too last week were Colonels Chiang Pin, Hsu Fang and Sung Hsueh-li while others of the Young Marshal's officers escaped or were held "in custody" at Sian.

By no means all, perhaps not a majority, of Kidnapper Chang's troops had gone over to the Red State last week and strong Nanking forces under General Ku Chu-tung were in their second month of creeping approach to Sian, close but hesitant to strike. So much money had already been spent by Nanking in bribes to regain Sian that it seemed a shame to have to spend shot & shell too. In the city was enigmatic General Yang Fu-cheng, erstwhile accomplice of the kidnapper. Nanking continued to figure that Yang had been or could be bought, gradually became alarmed last week over whether he could deliver--i. e., could get the Young Marshal's officer-butchering troops in hand within a reasonable time.

Hopefully the commander of Nanking's crack soldiers drawing near Sian, General Ku, announced: "Upon entering Sian, I am disposed not to assert authority but only give advice, when asked, for a preliminary period of three months. After that, if conditions have not bettered, I am resolved to take a firm stand!"

The troops under General Ku are the famed "Chiang's Own," smartly drilled by Germans, far better equipped than any other Chinese force, strictly brought up in the Christian virtues for years by the Methodist Generalissimo. That these soldiers might be morally too good was a fear to which their General Ku gave discreet expression last week. "If you observe the people of Sian and its province of Shensi smoking opium, ignore it for the present," he ordered, just before his troops finally entered Sian this week, apparently unresisted. "Hold your peace. We wish to forget that this Sian. trouble ever occurred. When in Sian you are seeking lodgings, ascertain that they are not occupied. Never seize quarters by force. The discipline of our Nanking armies must be strict."

Translating all this into Western terms, an army of goose-stepping choir boys had marched this week into an unregenerate old pagan stronghold. Ragamuffin Communists were trying to persuade the choir boys and everyone else to go Red. And opium reared the ugly head of Vice.

Morally this was a Chinese crisis. Historically, the fate of Eastern Asia might turn on who went Red and who did not. Geographically, there was interposed between China's migratory Red State and Soviet territory in Siberia and Outer Mongolia last week: 1) Japanese-dominated Manchukuo; 2) Japan's sphere of influence in North China; 3) the nomadic Mongols under famed Prince Te who openly exacts regular bribes from both Nanking and Tokyo (TIME, March 23 et ante), but seems in the depths of his complex character to be anti-Red. Just over the Soviet frontier is the Bolshevik Far Eastern Army under able General Vasily Constantinovich Blucher. In 1924-27, Comrade Blucher, under the nom de guerre of "General Galen," was chief military adviser to Generalissimo Chiang, then supplied by Soviet Russia with money and munitions. After the Generalissimo had conquered China and publicly renounced Communism, Red General Galen was permitted to "escape" via Shanghai. He took ship there unmolested and quietly returned to Moscow, trained many a Chinese Red Commander in Russia, is big brother of the Red State in China.

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