Uncomfortable Puppet

Uncomfortable Puppet

Well aware of the very possible possibility of being assassinated by some Chinese patriot, Mr. Wang Ching-wei, presumably with an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of his stomach, set out last week from Shanghai to become Japan's puppet Chinese Premier in famed Nanking, where 27 months ago Japanese troops broke discipline and committed modern history's greatest mass rape (TIME, Dec. 20, 1937).

Mr. Wang dared not even reveal to the Chinese people he expects to rule what are the terms of the pact he has made with Japan. "Now is not the time," bleated Wang in Shanghai, diving like a prairie dog into a Japanese steamer which chugged off up the swirling Yangtze, escorted by five Japanese gunboats. Lest somebody take a pot shot at Puppet Wang from the river bank, Japanese puppeteers kept him below decks, Japanese censorship choked off all news of what happened when "the new Premier" reached sacked and gutted Nanking.

To bolster up Wang prestige, Japanese army bigwigs in China who operate the puppet strings have been demanding that a top-rank Japanese statesman be sent as Tokyo's first Ambassador to the new Nanking puppet show. This week General Nobuyuki Abe, Premier of Japan until last January, was named Special Envoy and Ambassador Plenipotentiary by the Son of Heaven.

Meanwhile Japanese Premier Admiral Mitsumasa Yonai warned the Great Powers indirectly that their diplomatic and consular representatives may soon have to do business with "The Nanking Government" or find it impossible to look after their interests in central China. The fighting Chungking Government of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek observed the arrival of Wang in Nanking by issuing an order to burn every book written by either Wang Ching-wei or his disciple Chou Fu-hai.

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