Happy Days

From the bleak little Siberian town of Habarovsk flashed news last week of an informal meeting between one Tsai Yun-shen, representing China-and one Simbn-ovsky, Soviet. Deploring the Sino-Russian dispute, they signed a peace protocol. The terms: Immediate restoration of joint management of the Chinese Eastern Railway (cause of all the strife); withdrawal of the Soviet army from Manchuria; mutual release of civilian and military prisoners; mutual reopening of consulates; a formal conference at Moscow, Jan. 25, to settle all questions still under dispute. World chancelleries took note, awaited word of the Moscow agenda.

"Whew!" Wasp-waisted little President Chiang Kai-shek of China made a proclamation last week which resembled nothing so much as a long shrill "Whew!" The President was voicing his relief at his success as a field-marshal in beating off and vanquishing, at least for a time, the armies of war lords opposed to his regime (TIME, Oct. 14, et seq). Whewed he: "The recent upheaval against our Government was the greatest yet experienced. Our fate hung by a single hair. What was this hair? The loyalty and bravery of our officers and men, whose courage never faltered! Again they met the flood and carried us to firm ground." (Floods are the most frequent catastrophe in China, others scarcely less frequent being droughts and plagues.)

Good Little God. In Mukden, capital of the great northern Province of Manchuria, Governor-General Chang Hsueh-Liang had sufficient respite from war last week to entertain in sumptuous fashion that good little god, the Panchen Lama or "Living Buddha," devoutly venerated by millions of Chinese Buddhists.

For convenience sake the Panchen Lama might be called the "Buddhist Pope," and the Dalai Lama the temporal pontiff of Tibet. Just at present these two most holy persons are at outs, the Sovereign Dalai Lama holding his court at Lhasa, Tibetan capital, and the Panchen Lama roving about war-torn China with the immunity and pomp of a walking deity. In honor of this little man on whom rests the duty of maintaining Buddhist doctrines pure, an invigorating banquet was tendered by Governor-General Chang at which hot tiger's blood was drunk.

Godsend. The consuls of Britain, France, Japan, Germany and the U. S. who set out in a special train last fortnight to investigate conditions in the recent Russo-Chinese battle area in Manchuria (TIME, Dec. 23) chuffed back to Harbin last week, having been refused permission to visit the area they sought. "I am personally convinced," wired a Japanese correspondent who accompanied the party, "that neither the Russians nor the Chinese wanted us to see what is happening."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.