Mantell Emerges

Round the greying temples of a tough, old-school Erie Railwayman, the subsiding Russo-Chinese crisis spun anew last week, seethed up into a furious quarrel. In the U. S., friends of Railroader John J. Mantell grinned and were not surprised. They had rather thought last April, when he went out to China as Railway Advisor to the Nationalist Government, that something violent might happen and that sooner or later "J. J." would turn out to have had a hand in it.

Something big and violent did happen. Not long after Railway Advisor Mantell had checked up on the Chinese Eastern Railway (owned by Russia, jointly operated by China and Russia) the Chinese Government jailed or banished every Soviet member of the railway staff (TIME, July 22)--thus causing the war scare and crisis which has dragged out ever since. At the time there was nothing to connect Railroader Mantell with the railroading out of the Russians--nothing except a hunch. But the hunch grew and grew.

Last week at Mukden, Manchuria (the province served by the Chinese Eastern Railway and now menaced by Soviet troops), forthright John J. Mantell was persuaded to talk to a United Press correspondent. He declared that last year the Soviet officials of the Chinese Eastern Railway concealed a profit of $30,000,000 and told Chinese members of the board of directors that the road had earned only $138,000.

"The Russians kept their books in such a way that it is practically impossible to discover where the money went," said Railroader Mantell. "All this makes it apparent that to patch up peace on the basis of a return to the status quo ante [i. e., with Soviet officials again managing the road] would be intolerable."

If such charges were laid before the Chinese Government last summer they must have powerfully influenced the decision to oust the Russians. Direct action has always been J. J. Mantell's forte. In 1920, when he was New York District Manager for the Erie Railroad, he broke a crippling strike by running his trains with crews composed of college youths and commuters. By speaking out last week he effectively revived a lot of the Russo-Chinese animosity which had been allayed by the two countries' envoys in Germany on the basis of a return to the status quo ante, in negotiations last fortnight (TIME, Sept. 9).

In Moscow, reports of Mr. Mantell's charges caused the Government news organ Pravda to headline: WHO IS INFLAMING THE CONFLICT? Pravda scented an "international capitalist plot," hinted that Jersey City's Mantell is the agent of a Manhattan banking group which seeks to get control of the Chinese Eastern. Referring to the specific charge of Soviet malfeasance, the former Assistant Man- ager of the Chinese Eastern, Comrade V. G. Chirkin, said:

"The total income in 1928 was about $32,500,000. The operating expenses were approximately $20,000,000. The balance was expended as follows: $3,500,000 for new tracks, bridges and other improvements; more than $2,000,000 were spent for obligatory support of Chinese institutions not connected with the railroad; $2,250,000 went for the maintenance of police and public schools, etc. $4,000,000 have not been collected from Chinese institutions, which paid for transportation with depreciated currency at an artificially fixed rate."

Said Soviet Acting Commissar for Foreign Affairs Maxim Maximovitch Litvinov: "Mantell's statement proves an evident desire by interested imperialist circles to ruin the existing possibility of a peaceful settlement of the conflict between Russia and China and to make our relations with China more acute."

As both governments grew thoroughly irritated, the Chinese and Soviet official press services started up a game they have not played for a fortnight -- the dangerous sport of announcing that while "our troops" were trying to maintain an inoffensive guard along the China-Russian frontier, "their troops" were raiding across the border, thus obliging "our troops" to engage the rascals and drive them back where they belonged.

The Soviet news TASS (telegraph agency of the Soviet State) reported: "Chinese troops unexpectedly opened artillery and rifle fire on Soviet border troops in the Grodekov-Poltaskoya district, in the Nikolsk region [on the 'eastern front' near Vladivostok]." The Chinese version of this clash described it as a "Soviet invasion" by infantry and bombing planes. The Japanese Rengo correspondent at Harbin, Manchuria (300 miles from the scene) probably hazarded as good a guess as anyone's as to what happened when he cabled : "There was hard fighting with considerable loss on both sides which continued for 20 hours."