Northward Advance

The Southern Chinese area dominated by three groups of "Chinese Nationalists''/- was extended northward last week by the advance of their several armies toward Peking. The reaction of U. S. President Coolidge to this situation was to inform reporters that the removal of the U. S. Legation from Peking down to the seacoast at Tientsin, or even 650 miles southward to Shanghai, was contemplated. The reaction of John Van Antwerp MacMurray, alert, pugnacious U. S. Minister at Peking, was to keep the cables busy with code messages which legation officials privately said were appeals for instructions to stand pat at Peking. . . . This meant that Minister MacMurray was looking out for troops to defend the Legation from possible captors of Peking. Late in the week he seemed to be getting the troops he sought. Marine Commander-in-China General Smedley Darlington Butler rushed north from Shanghai, landed two troop ships carrying 1,900 U. S. marines at Tientsin, and personally hurried up to confer with Mr. MacMurray at Peking. Meanwhile the British and French were rushing troops to protect their legations at Peking, and observers thought that only the very greatest tenacity on the part of U. S. President Coolidge would prevent the U. S. Administration from being swept into the policy long advocated by Minister MacMurray: armed intervention cooperating with Great Britain and other Great Powers.

Bingham Robbed. U. S. Senator Hiram Bingham, onetime Governor of Connecticut, big-boned Honolulu-born Yankee, explorer, archaeologist, World War aviation Lieutenant-Colonel, onetime Yale professor, and father of seven sons (one of whom is studying Chinese in Peking) was set upon in his private car by Chinese soldiers last week, in Honan Province.

The soldiers, itinerant northern mercenaries, took from Senator Bingham $1,000 in cash and his $500 motion picture camera. He, often imperious and peremptory in the Senate, was considered lucky last week to get the private car in which he traveled shunted back to Peking, whence he had ventured out to view the battle area.

Shantung Seized. Perhaps the most striking single event of the week in China was the sending of 2,000 Japanese troops to Tsingtao (Shantung), where, it was announced they will "protect Japanese lives and property." Observers thought it not unlikely that the post World War claims of Japan to Shantung, a rich province, will now be permanently revived."

/- 1)The "Communist Nationalists" at Hankow who seemed to have composed their differences with the Conservative Nationalists last week, and to be re-establishing a stable regime in which the Soviet Russian agent Michael Borodin (see RUSSIA) was again prominent after a period of eclipse. 2)The "Conservative Nationalists" of Nanking who were rapidly pushing toward Peking last week, led by their generalissimo Chiang Kaishek. 3) The "Independent Nationalist" army of General Feng Yusiang, likewise advancing on Peking from Honan Province