Docile Fatalists

Two hundred thousand Chinese drew taut their belts last week, faced starvation with what fortitude they might. For three weeks they had been besieged in the walled city of Wuchang. Super-Tuchun Chang Kaishek, the Cantonese Communist War Lord had ringed them round with a besieging army of 100,000 mercenaries. He demanded the surrender of the city, its arsenals, its ironworks, its mint. Terrified, the civil inhabitants would have acquiesced, surrendered. They were prevented from surrendering their own city by the military garrison left behind by Super Tuchun Wu Pei-fu, as he retreated before Chang Kai-shek (TIME, Oct. 4).

Docile fatalists, the citizens of Wuchang, grew hungrier day by day, struck no blow for themselves.

Other developments:

Dr. Vi Kuyuin Wellington Koo, famed "political handyman of China," sometime Chinese plenipotentiary to the principal Occidental powers and conferences during the last generation, was commanded by Super Tuchun Chang Tso-lin, War Lord of Manchuria and Peking, to form a Cabinet.

Dr. Koo, obliging, conjured together a ministry of professional statesmen. The new Government represents militarist-torn China in much the same way that a sea captain whose crew have mutinied and are fighting amongst themselves represents the cringing passengers locked below decks.

Chu Chao-hsin, Chinese Minister to Italy, backed up last week his protest before the League of Nations (TIME, June 14) against alleged British high-handedness in China by cabling all prominent Chinese Chambers of Commerce a request that they support him in demanding treaty concessions from Britain in reparation for the recent British bombardment of Wanshien (TIME, Sept. 20).

The great Russo-Asiatic Bank, with headquarters at Shanghai and branches throughout China went into bankruptcy last week.

Underlying causes: 1) nationalization by Soviet Russia of a doubtful majority of the Bank's shares; 2) disorganization due to civil war of the Chinese Eastern Railway largely owned by the Bank; 3) record depression of the world silver market last week to 59-c- an ounce, the Bank having the largest silver holdings in China.