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About once a week, on the eighth floor of his China Theater headquarters in Shanghai, long-suffering Lieut. General Albert C. Wedemeyer holds a press conference with some 60 U.S., Chinese and Russian newsmen. TIME Correspondent John Walker cabled this account of a typical session:

The press arrives first at these affairs. It seats itself in rows of wooden chairs, and smokes for a few minutes while the incongruous little iron stove fights a losing battle against the chill from outside. Presently General Wedemeyer comes in and sits at a desk, like a schoolmaster. Behind him is a big map of China. At his left stands an interpreter.

Double Talk. Everything is bilingual. The General reads or answers a question, and the interpreter puts it into Chinese. The same goes for questions from the floor. This repetition drags the thing out, gives it a strange, interminable quality I've never encountered before, and must be maddening to Wedemeyer. He never shows it.

Today's conference was a 75-minute gripe session that might well go down in modern Chinese history as the Day of the Big Wind. First came the Americans' questions: When were idle G.I.s to be reassigned? Why couldn't a correspondent buy a parka when the Army was about to sell equipment to Chinese?

Then the Russians from Tass agency weighed in: Did the General know about the outrages committed by U.S. troops against the Soviet Union? (Two G.I.s reportedly beat up a Russian; another drunk yanked a Soviet flag off a store display.) Didn't he think such acts were caused by vicious anti-Soviet propaganda?

Who Else But? The Chinese--some of whom have not the foggiest notion what a press conference is--kept asking in different ways: When were the Americans leaving? Did the General know of the bad behavior of his troops in Shanghai?

All the way through, General Wedemeyer gave straight answers, kept his all-but-saintly patience--until a Chinese asked a question I shall always cherish as a supreme example of jerkery: "Do you have any jeeps for sale?" Wedemeyer winced as though struck across the face with a dead carp. He snapped through clenched teeth: "I'm not a sales agent for anything!" Then he recovered, earnestly explained how surplus property is sold.

Finally someone said, "Thank you, General Wedemeyer." We all stood up and he strode out, looking a little more harried than when he came in.

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