Quiet Week

The grand old Duke of York He had ten thousand men. He marched them up a hill one day Then he marched them down again.

CHORUS

And when they were up they were up! And when they were down they were down! But when they were only half way up, hey were neither up nor down!

Major General John Duncan, Commander of the British expeditionary forces at Shanghai (TIME, Feb. 7) shrewdly ordered, last week, a maneuver similar to that of the great Duke of York in the above nursery chanty. General Duncan saw that something must be done to impress the Northern Chinese in Shanghai and the Southern Chinese who are trying to capture it with the idea that Britain has a real army in China, will soon have 30,000 men at or near Shanghai, and means to protect her interests permanently.* How could all this be better said to Chinese than by a parade of British might? Soon General Duncan ordered 1,100 British troops to parade ten miles through the international and Chinese settlements at Shanghai.

Two days later the statesmanship of U. S. Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg assumedly prompted Vice Admiral Clarence S. Williams, commanding the U. S. forces at Shanghai, to imitate the British parade, though in more cautious fashion. Twelve hundred U. S. marines marched, but they did not venture beyond the international city. None the less Chinese knew this meant that the U. S. is standing with Britain in the present crisis.

Along the Chinese battlefront west of Shanghai all was suspiciously quiet last week. Suddenly the subordinate Northern general* in command of Shanghai's immediate defenses went over to the Southern enemy, ordered the 2,000 troops under his command to withdraw back toward Shantung whence they came only a fortnight ago (TIME, March 7). Simultaneously the Southern generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek launched a swift attack to cut the Shanghai-Nanking railway at Soochow. The fall of Soochow (reported but unconfirmed) would cut off the Northern armies of the "two great Changs"/- from hastening to defend Shanghai and leave the Shanghai area defenseless against the conquering Southern "Nationalist" or "Cantonese."

Alarmist travelers from northern China told: 1) that a Soviet Russian army of 50,000 men is assembling in Mongolia north of Peking; 2) that the "Christian" War Lord Feng Yu-hsiang is moving slowly down upon North Central China with his large itinerant army (TIME, Feb. 28).

*Buildings suitable for barracks were leased for three years by the British at Shanghai last week.

*0ne Li Pao-chang.

/- "Chang of Shantung" (Chang Tsung-chang) against whom Li mutinied last week; and the awful, potent "Chang of Manchuria," the only Chinese war lord with an army equipped in really Occidental style.