Dear White House Friend

"Soldiers, officers, they who call me a military dictator slander me!

"Soldiers, officers, I am your comrade!"

Thus last week spoke shrill, wasp-waisted little President Chiang Kai-shek to troops at his capital, Nanking. Shrilly he continued:

"I leave now to direct the anti-bandit campaign! If I succeed I will retire to my birthplace near Ningpo--thereby proving to the world and to the nation that I have no ambition to establish a dictatorship nor another dynasty, as charged by my reactionary enemies. If I fail, I will die fighting!"

By his "reactionary enemies" (whom he hopes to clean up next after the bandits) President Chiang meant the new self-styled Chinese Government at Canton (TIME, June 8). Its most august member is wizened Tang Shao-yi, in 1912 First Premier of the Chinese Republic.

When charges were made in the last U. S. Presidential campaign against "Hoover's Chinese record" venerable Tang refuted these charges, testified that in China young Engineer Herbert Hoover was an honorable man. Last week the President presumably saw in the New York Herald Tribune (No. 1 Republican newsorgan) a message addressed to himself by Tang Shao-yi, commencing, "My dear friend. . . .

"Behind Nanking's rococo fac,ade, which some foreigners have helped to erect, there is working a political system, or rather a family corporation whose idea of running the country is the management and exploitation of China as the property of Chiang Kai-shek and his so-called family."

Modestly, Venerable Tang called his message a mere "explanation" of why he joined the Canton Government. It implied, delicately, a plea for U. S. recognition.

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