Treaty Riot

Many a disgruntled and suspicious U. S. farmer would like to hear Herbert Clark Hoover say, as President:

"If I fail to put through farm relief within three years, you may cut off my head!"

In China the interminably postponed program equivalent to "Farm Relief" is what Chinese call "Abrogation of China's Unequal Treaties with the Powers." Every succeeding Government for decades has promised to seek revision or abrogation of the "Unequal Treaties;" but only the new Nationalist Government at Nanking has taken actual steps to do so.

Last week Chinese students at Nanking got out of patience even with the rapid progress now being made by Foreign Minister Dr. C. T. Wang. They knew that he was negotiating with Japanese Consul General Shichitaro Yada; and they thought both negotiators a little too polite and slow. Suddenly student exuberance boiled over, and a mob rushed to hurl brickbats and curses at the walls which sheltered Dr. Wang and M. Yada. Loomed a diplomatic incident of gravest sort. Only quick action by one of the Nationalist "Big Three"--Chiang, Feng or Yen (TIME, Dec. 24)--could stop the brickbatting, dispose the mob.

Fortunately the President of China, Marshal Chiang Kaishek, is quick. Not five minutes after he received a frantic phone call from Dr. Wang, there was heard in the streets of Nanking the piercing siren of the presidential Packard (TIME, Oct. 29).

With four soldiers clinging to hand grips on the sides of his limousine, and with two more soldiers on the box behind, President Chiang Kai-shek sped to the scene. As the mob of students sullenly parted to let him through, and then closed in behind, Marshal Chiang faced a nasty situation. The so-called "students" are really a conglomeration of all the younger and more violent partisans of the Nationalist regime. They would have to be wooed and harangued, not bluntly ordered to disperse.

Soon the experienced Marshal burst into a passionate address in the tempo of Friends, Romans, Chinamen!

The actual words of the President of China, as he rose to the climax of his speech, amid frenzied cheers were:

"Citizens and comrades! If within the next three years the Unequal Treaties are not abrogated, and if by that time every foreign soldier has not left the soil of

China--then comrades, I will bow my head in shame, and you shall hew it off!"

Soon despatches called the situation "quiet," said that Dr. Wang, after nervously threatening to resign, was continuing negotiations with the Powers as Foreign Minister.

Presently the British Minister, Sir Miles Wedderburn Lampson, arrived at Nanking and signed with Dr. Wang a treaty granting de jure recognition of the Nationalist regime by His Majesty's Government, and according to Great Britain, "most favored nation" status under the new Chinese Tariff Law, effective Feb. 1, 1929.

Next day, amid prodigious Nanking rejoicings, Sir Miles extended official British recognition to the new Nationalist state and presented his credentials as the first British Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Nanking while Chinese airplanes zoomed overhead and with Chinese bands piping and squeaking God Save the King. A 21-gun salute boomed from the British war boat Suffolk anchored off Nanking on the mighty wimpling Yantze.

This salute historic was the first ever accorded by a great power to the new Nationalist President, Chiang Kaishek. Such a salute would have been fired long ago by a German war boat since Berlin is exceedingly friendly to Nanking, except for the fact that the disarmed German Republic has never had in Chinese waters a war boat potent enough to thunder a proper salute. A recent trifling difference between U. S. Minister to China John Van Antwerp MacMurray, and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang resulted in cancellation of fully perfected plans that a U. S. war boat should fire the first "big gun" salute since the U. S. officially "recognized" the Nationalists months ago (TIME, Aug. 6). The failure of U. S. guns to boom seems an inexcusably missed trick.