Foreigners, Chang & Four

Tientsin. The shattering news that Britons had hauled down their flag and virtually evacuated their concession at Hankow (TIME, Jan. 17) traversed China last week and completely altered the plans of that shrewd, semibarbarous Northern warlord, Chang Tso-lin, who dominates both Peking and Tientsin. Heretofore, Chang has stood with the foreigners against the new Chinese Nationalist Government which has swept across half China and forced the British to evacuate Hankow. Last week Chang decided that if the Nationalists could seize $60,000,000 worth of British property at Hankow, "Chicago of China," and bluff it through, he could do even better at Tientsin, "the commercial capital of North China."

Soon a sumptuously robed representative of the luxurious Chang called at the various foreign consulates in Tientsin. He hinted with excessive politeness that the incident at Hankow had established a precedent. The great lord Chang Tso-lin felt that as a matter of patriotism he must demand as much for China and himself as had the Nationalists at Hankow. Therefore, would the foreigners at Tientsin seriously consider turning over their concessions--worth $120,000,000--to Chang, in the near future? The great lord urged no indecent haste, but in the meantime he would raise the duties on all goods imported into North China and pocket the increase as a slight evidence of his patriotism. . . .

Dazed, the foreigners at Tientsin paid the increased import dues, wondered if they would really have to evacuate.

Shanghai. Midway between the patriots of North and South China, the great foreign colony at Shanghai remained last week in uneasy expectancy that one faction or the other will soon find a precedent for seizing the foreign concessions-- valued at nearly $1,000,000,000.

In Shanghai the week was ugly. One thousand Chinese factory workers struck, began to smash their machines and had to be quelled with cold spatting justice from a high pressure fire hose. Street car workers struck, and one Chinese foreman who sought to harangue them back to work was quietly assassinated. Cool but wary, the Shanghai Municipal Council barricaded the foreign quarter, ordered barbed wire strung where it would do the most good, and published in Chinese and English a solemn warning that the colony would defend itself to the last rickshaw, if attacked by any Chinese faction whatever.

Though 58 foreign war craft with a possible landing force of 5,000 men were anchored off Shanghai, there was desperate uncertainty as to what they would do in case of a Chinese attack. To bombard prematurely would be to incite the Chinese to murder out of hand all the hundreds of isolated foreign missionaries in the interior of China who are absolutely with out defense.

A faint earnest of what these missionaries may expect was given by a sampan rower at Hankow, a fortnight ago, who had been hired to row the Bishop of Hankow across the Yangtze River. In mid stream, and with 16 foreign war craft in sight, he drew a knife, forced the Bishop to hand over all his money, clapped the Bishop's hat on his own head, and finally landed him at an isolated spot, volleying curses meanwhile.

Missionaries arriving from the interior told of bandit gangs raiding undefended villages in a spirit of grim carnival. In the formerly law-abiding province of Shantung, for example, the town of Wangchihpao was sacked and 1,000 Chinese killed. Many children whose parents had been murdered came to the bandits, begged mercy, food. Ogreish, the murderers amused themselves by seizing the legs and arms of the smaller children and literally tearing them to pieces. Older boys and girls were stripped, then flogged, or maimed, killed or set free at the whim of their captors.

Foochow. Nationalist soldiers looted the mission quarter of Foochow, a sizable southern sea port, abducted hundreds of Chinese orphan girls cared for by the missionaries, and forced the Spanish Bishop Aguirre to flee by sea to Hongkong. British and Y, M. C. A. missions were also looted.

Hankow. Strangely enough th Nationalists who had ousted the British from their concession ai Hankow found this valuable property a white elephant. Local Chinese merchants who habitually dealt through the British banks discovered their contact and means of trading with the outside world cut off. Manufacture, commerce, shipping were at a standstill. The few Britons who remained had barricaded themselves in a steel bank vault. Soon blotchy hysterical posters appeared: "Death to the British slaves who are trying tc strangle us by stopping our commerce!"

Plainly John Chinaman had opened his mouth so wide and bitten off so huge a chunk of foreign property that he was all but strangled. Pitifully enough, some coolies who saw starvation loom repaired the flagstaff of the British Consulate, which they had torn down a few days before, and ran up the Union Jack--though unwittingly upside down. A symbol, it was Hankow.

Big Four. From the British Legation at Peking, Counsellor O. O'Malley hastened to Hankow. In London Foreign Secretary Sir Austen Chamberlain could find nothing more militant to say than that of course the Chinese could seize all foreign concessions if they were so short-sighted as to do so. This attitude made Mr. O'Malley's task most difficult, though nothing could have made it easy. He entered forthwith upon negotiations looking to re-occupancy of the British concession and resumption of trade.

Against his wits were pitted those of four Cantonese Nationalists whose names loomed internationally last week from the present headquarters at Hankow: 1) T. V. Soong, 33, a graduate of the Harvard School of Business Administration, later employed by the International Banking Corp. at Manhattan, now the outstanding civil leader at Hankow, partly because he is the brother-in-law of the late founder of the Nationalist movement, famed Dr. Sun Yatsen. He and his sister, the pretty widow, serve to remind soldiers and coolies of the great revolutionary name. 2) Eugene Chen, Foreign Secretary of the Nationalist Government, who employs a white U. S. citizen, as his under secretary, and said last week: "We are not antiforeign, but anti-imperial. We are not against Germany or Russia because they are not against us; but most other foreign nations are imperialists in China, and our enemies." 3) Chiang Kaishek, the generalissimo who has conquered half China for the Nationalists. 4) Michael Markovitch Borodin, famed Soviet Russian political adviser to the Nationalists (TIME, Jan. 3).