"Away on a Party"

Temperamental little President Chiang Kai-shek of Nationalist China, whose waist is as slim and mind as changeable as a woman's, changed his mind every other day last week, about the civil war he is waging with the so-called "People's Army" (TIME, Nov.11).

First he telegraphed urgent orders that reserves should be rushed to the war section in Honan for a "grand offensive." Secondly, he wired that his armies would "sit composedly and starve the rebels out." Within 48 hours, and without previous warning, the President's field headquarters radioed: "The dead are piled mountain high. We have recaptured Mihsien" (25 miles from the vital rail junction Cheng-chow).

About the most certain thing in China, last week, was the kidnaping at Tientsin of one Aaron Brenner, 40-year-old Manhattan fur buyer, by bandits who asked $500.000 ransom.

"Will you pay it?" queried prying Manhattan reporters of Brother Herman Brenner, head of the fur firm. "If Aaron has really been kidnaped," said Herman, "we'll do everything to get his release. I think it more likely though that he has just gone away on a party."

To be on the safe side, Brother Herman telegraphed Secretary of State Henry Lewis Stimson who urgently cabled the U. S. Legation at Peking. In Tientsin a third Brenner Brother, Joseph, soon received from bandit hands a letter:

For God's sake pay out this ransom.

Aaron.