Crisis

Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek last week left the heat and din of Nanking for breezeswept Kuling, the mountain resort which used to be China's prewar summer capital. There he shed his uniform for a comfortable gown and strolled about the clean-swept, maple-shaded streets. Nevertheless, the political temperature continued to rise and the Government's discomfiture increased.

A Nanking insider sized up the crisis: "The trend of events indicates that the Generalissimo, while unwilling to risk an all-out, knockdown-dragout civil war is determined to push the Communists away from the railroads and out of economically important areas. The big question is whether the Generalissimo can keep the Communists bottled up on the sidelines while he achieves his objectives in a short time. If the going is tough the next two or three months, he will probably return to negotiation--provided hell does not pop beyond the possibility of control."

Last week Mme. Sun Yatsen, elder sister of Madame Chiang, broke a long silence on politics with a public statement that advanced the possibility of hellzapoppin China. Said she: "In recent years . . . I have avoided political controversy . . . [but] today we are threatened by a civil war into which the reactionaries hope to draw America, thus involving the whole world. . . . I feel it is necessary to speak. . . . The present crisis is not a question of who wins--the Kuomintang or the Communists. It is a question of the Chinese people. . . . The time of the Kuomintang tutelage is over. . . . A coalition government must be set up immediately. . . . The first flame of world conflagration is burning today in our land. It must be quenched lest it destroy the world."

Though politically sophisticated Chinese knew well that Mme. Sun had long been the Chinese Communists' best friend-in-high-places, none would belittle the effect her statement would have among the Chinese people.

Angel's Bed. The week's mounting tension augured ill for General George C. Marshall's mission of peace. When he went to Kuling for a short visit with Chiang he saw on Kuling's main street a large poster-portrait of himself, subscribed: "Welcome General Marshall, Most Honored Angel of Peace." That night in Chiang's guest cottage, General Marshall slept in a bed seven feet long and five feet wide. The Kuling correspondent of Ta Rung Pao, Shanghai's independent newspaper, reported this fact to his readers, then asked: "Why is the bed so wide?" The correspondent supplied his own answer: "It's hard to be a mediator --he's expected to spend sleepless nights tossing about."

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