Inglorious Victory

Victories are always glorious, whether won by chance or skill. --ARIOSTO

The dense, teeming Chinese quarter of the great international city at Shanghai was captured by the Cantonese Nationalist army, last week; but this great victory over a city of almost two million souls was won in a fashion inglorious and ridiculous. . . .

1) The white men and women in the Occidental Quarter of Shanghai were protected by 20,000 troops, mostly British. They scarcely knew or cared who captured the Chinese Quarter. On the very eve of this "great victory" a correspondent cabled from Shanghai:

"A gala performance of Barrie's one-act plays, staged by a society of amateurs, was crowded with brilliantly uniformed foreign officers and brilliantly gowned women. The street lights reflect a miniature Paris, but in some respects more beautiful because the harbor, with its many foreign warships, illuminates this extraordinary Yangtze metropolis."

2) Not even in the Chinese quarter did anyone much care what happened. The city has been the prey of super-bandits, calling themselves "War Lords" for years; and all the inhabitants faced, last week, was the arrival of another army which might be a little more lenient about looting than the last, since its leaders profess the brotherhood of Chinese against the foreigner. But small disturbances bred riots; the streets of the native city seethed with turbulent and unorganized fighting. To the International Settlement, thousands of fugitive Chinese, 100 white Russians fled, sought refuge.

3) The Cantonese had so often been announced to be at the gates, on a false alarm, that when they arrived, last week, their coming was almost an anticlimax. There was no fighting. The defenders, a miserable rabble of mercenaries, had simply fled back from the previous scene of battle; and, as they scattered to hide as best they could, the Cantonese Nationalist columns trudged in. As they billeted themselves in the Chinese City, British soldiers and marines paced with fixed bayonets outside the barbed-wire-defended Occidental City. They saw their first real action when retreating soldiers of the

Northern Chinese Army, broke through the barrier in search of loot. Two British armored cars sped to the attack, three Britishers were wounded in the exchange. In another part of the International .Settlement, two British Punjabi soldiers were killed, ten wounded, in a short clash. In Moscow as news came that Shanghai, "stronghold of imperialism" had fallen, thousands of jubilant workers tramped the streets waving red flags and singing the "Internationale".

Nationalist Disunion. Far more important than events at Shanghai, last week, was a meeting of the Central Executive Committee of the Nationalist party at Hankow. The Committee is extremely potent, similar to the Communist Executive Committee which dominates Soviet Russia. When the Chinese committee assembled at Hankow, last week, it was the sense of the meeting that its members wished to relieve their Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek from his command--despite the capture of Shanghai by his troops. Such a knifing in the back by civilians of a successful commander would be almost unprecedented. Contradictory despatches, gave the impression that the Committee, although definitely on record as desiring to oust General Chiang and take control of the army itself, did not actually take this hazardous step. . . .

Paramount was the revelation that the Nationalists -- hitherto united--are dangerously if not disastrously split. Victorious Chiang Kai-shek was reported in one despatch to have publicly renounced the Bolshevism professed by the Committee; and to be on the point of constituting himself civil as well as military dictator of the Nationalist movement.

Striking Development: 1) seizure of the $2,000,000 British cigaret factory at Hankow, last week, by the Chinese workers, egged on by the Nationalists, who announced that the factory will henceforth be run on Communist lines; 2) announcement by the Provost of Johns Hopkins University, Charles K. Edmunds, to Shanghai reporters that during a recent visit to Canton he formally relinquished control of the historic Canton Christian College to the Nationalists. "I personally welcome the transfer," said Mr. Edmunds. "The Chinese attitude is wholesome, and the Nationalist movement, at any rate in Canton, [where it originated] is promising"; 3) announcement at New Haven, Conn., by the trustees of Yale-In-China that Dr. Edward H. Hume, President of this U. S.-financed Chinese college at Changsha, has resigned and will be replaced as soon as possible by a Chinese.