"Maintaining Prestige"

At Peiping, a swift kick by a Japanese sentry found its mark last week in the stomach of attractive Miss Carol Lathrop, 18 (see cut), sister-in-law of a U. S. Marine captain stationed in North China. Weeping, but not greatly injured, Miss Lathrop then got a kick in the side, and a Mrs. Jones with whom she had been out for a stroll, received a powerful kick in the behind from another Japanese sentry. Vigorous protests by U. S. Ambassador to China Nelson T. Johnson were unavailing last week as Japanese officials maintained there had been "no violence." Sniffed Mrs. Jones: "If being kicked and shoved as we were isn't violence, then I'd hate to meet the real article. Undoubtedly we went too close to the [Japanese] barricades, although I don't recall we had "any idea of looking inside as the Japanese suggested."

Miss Lathrop and Mrs. Jones were thus treated in just about the same way as were Chinese troops of the 2Qth Army commanded by Peiping General Sung Cheh-yuan this week. Japanese Lieut. General Kiyoshi Kazuki grew tired of what seemed to him the stubborn slowness of Chinese forces to yield to his demands that they clear out of North China (TIME, July 26). In an action which Japanese officials described as "maintaining prestige," General Kazuki had Japanese airmen heavily bomb Langfang, a station between Peiping and Tientsin on the railway from which area he was insisting that the Chinese 29th Army withdraw.

The Chinese Government at Nanking having telegraphed General Sung orders to resist the Japanese, the jittery Japanese Embassy in Peiping sent out a call for reinforcements to its guard. From Fengtai hastened 500 Japanese with machine guns and light artillery to Peiping's Chengyang Gate. The outer gate opened and in rushed about 250 Japanese. Suddenly the outer gate closed, trapping the Japanese between the outer and inner gates and the Chinese flung hand grenades among the trapped. With Japan roaring at this "treachery" and China as stubborn as ever there loomed this week the threat of fair-sized war in North China.

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