Alert on Formosa

The Chinese Communists last week seemed to be getting ready to attack Formosa. For two days, Red shore batteries shelled Quemoy Island, three miles off the mainland port of Amoy. Nationalist intelligence reported that four Communist armies had been moved into position along the coast under leadership of Red General Chen Yi, who boasted last week that his forces had been assigned the glorious task of "liberating" Formosa.

On the Chinese coast, 100 miles from Formosa, the Red Seamen's Union had mobilized a million tons of wooden shipping, rebuilt junks as landing craft.

Against the Reds stands the U.S. Seventh Fleet, under orders from President Truman to "secure" Formosa from attack. The Nationalists themselves have an army of 400,000 men on Formosa, an air force of 300 planes and a tiny navy.

Last week, preparing for action, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek reshuffled his government, dissolved the Kuomintang's

Central Executive Committee and replaced it with a "Central Reform Committee." Kuomintang spokesmen carefully explained that this move finally ended the power of the "CC clique," named for the Brothers Chen Li-fu and Chen Kuo-fu. Many U.S. observers have blamed the CC group for much of the inefficiency of Chiang's regime. Key figure in the reform drive was Formosa's able governor K. C. Wu, former mayor of Chungking and of Shanghai. Said Wu recently: "I am determined to eradicate corruption [and] to make the island as secure internally as the military men are going to make it from the outside."

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