Best of Evils

A very tall commanding Englishman landed last week at Shanghai. To the coolies who rushed to seize his bags he spoke a few words in fluent guttural Chinese. In his honor the British press of Shanghai spread headlines, welcomed Miles Lampson, the new British Minister to China, hinted hopefully that his arrival would be followed by a strong British demonstration against the "Cantonese Bolsheviks" whose armies captured Foochow last week and were advancing on Shanghai.

Hopeful that Minister Lampson came to inaugurate a firm British "Imperialist" policy in China, the Union Club of Shanghai banqueted him, waited over the cigars for some hint of Downing Street's policy toward China from their lanky guest. At last he dropped a most portentous hint. "Gentlemen," he said, "I am going to Hankow on my way to Peking. . . ." Thus, by a bland indirection, Minister Lampson announced that his real business in China is not with the impotent vanishing "Government" at Peking to which he is accredited, but with the new, potent Cantonese Government which already controls half China and was moved last week to its new Capital, the recently captured city of Wuchang (TIME, Oct. 18), which is just across the river from Hankow. When Minister Lampson left for Hankow "on his way to Peking" last week, he went 1,500 miles "out of his way," if he ever intends to go to Peking at all. Next day the press of Shanghai, quick to take a hint, sadly urged its readers to "make the best of the fact that Great Britain is eventually going to recognize the Cantonese Government at Wuchang." Meanwhile from Canton there set out Mrs. Sun Yatsen, widow of the first President of China (Jan.-Feb. 1912), famed revolutionary statesman Dr. Sun Yatsen, who founded the Cantonese Government (1917) as a rival to Peking, but died in Peking (1925) before the recent Cantonese conquest of the whole southern half of China. With Widow Sun Yat-sen a devout widow, traveled the brilliant and astute Soviet Russian agent Michael Borodin. M. Borodin has been the intermediary between Moscow and Canton since before the death of Dr. Sun Yatsen. One of his few false moves was to keep the Cantonese waiting for weeks while a ceremonial coffin was being brought from Moscow for the dead Dr. Sun. When it eame, it was too tawdry for use, and Borodin's stock fell momentarily in Chinese eyes. But he has brought much beside an inadequate coffin to China--gold, guns, ammunition, though not so much as is popularly believed. As he sped toward Wuchang with Mrs. Sun a wild rumor was concocted: that this frail, and by Chinese reckoning, beautiful woman would be set up as President of China to keep before the masses the great name: SUN YATSEN. Actually such a development is unthinkable because of the ideas about women prevailing among the unreconstructed Chinese. Mrs. Sun, "Mother of the Chinese Republic," gained that title exclusively as the wife of Dr. Sun and is no more likely to germinate Presidentially at Wuchang than is the widow of Lenin apt to become dictatrix of Soviet Russia, where she is respected but not obeyed.

Mogul v. Cadet. At the moment, the "Presidency" of China is a matter of insignificance in a land so torn by anarchy that only the military are of account. Last week the Pekingese War Lord Chang Tso-lin, temperamentally a cruel, picturesque, luxurious "Great Mogul" began his expected offensive against the Cantonese (TIME, Dec. 6), by issuing a statement shrewdly designed to win Occidental sympathy: "I am fighting not only in behalf of China, but in behalf of the World. ... The menace of Bolshevism is a world menace and the Cantonese are Bolsheviks. . . . Whether I win or lose is personally indifferent to me, but if I lose then someone else must pick up my spear and hurl it at the heart of Communism. . . . If I win I shall stand for a just revision of China's international treaties, not for their abrogation, which is the object of the Cantonese."

Against this astute Mogul, wise in the thought of the Occident, the Cantonese War Lord Chiang Kai-shek steadily deployed his troops last week. He it was who created for Dr. Sun the Whampoa Military Academy in which the officers of the new Cantonese army received their military and political training--for they have been shown no less the use of the sword than how to propagandize their troops into a frenzy of Cantonese loyalty. Chiang Kaishek, a sort of super-Whampoa Cadet, is content to wear an austere cotton shirt and sips hot water with his frugal meals, while Chang Tso-lin banquets among his dancing girls. From the cold north of Manchuria and Peking comes the barbaric Mogul to drive back if he can the Cadet who has conquered half China--and last week Great Britain seemed to favor the Cadet.

Cantonese Bolshevism. How Bolshevistic is Chiang Kaishek? Dr. Sun sent him to Moscow in 1922, and there he studied for a few months, bringing back with him Russian military experts who became instructors at Whampoa. Chiang has taken what Russian gold and guns he could get, but it should be noted that he could get no others. He has said: "We can and will use men and money from any nation sympathetic to us. . . . Russia, in general, has treated China better than the other nations."

There rests the crux of Chiang's "Bolshevism." It is rather pan-Chinese patriotism. As he walks among his soldiers they cry: "China for the Chinese!" Amid the present 15-year-old Chinese anarchy, Chiang Kai-shek is at tempting to create a strong Chinese government and has employed Michael Borodin and everyone else who would aid him. A Cantonese Government of all China would undoubtedly be laid out on modified principles of Communism. If stable, such a government would be preferred even by the Conservatives in Downing Street to another 15 years of Chinese anarchy, as the best of many evils.