Forbidden City

To the Peiping Railway Station from the gigantic piles of pink masonry which are the towering gates of the Forbidden City, all traffic was cut off. Troops with fixed bayonets lined the road. At strategic intervals the Shui-hui (volunteer fire companies) were drawn up with their hoses ready. They might have been preparations for a riot, a great parade or a state funeral. A funeral in a sense it was. All night long gangs of coolies in ragged padded cotton clothing passed down that roadway dragging creaking carts and wheelbarrows piled high with boxes and packing cases. Three thousand separate cases went that night, 882 more went the next day. Treasure valued at $20.000.000 which the Manchu Emperors of China assembled for 250 years went south, last week, to Nanking and Shanghai.

Far to the North, hollow-eyed Henry Pu Yi, Japan's puppet ruler of Manchukuo, wondered how soon he would be returned to his old home. A faction in the Japanese Supreme War Council was known to be waiting only for spring and the thawing of the roads to driv.e straight to Peiping and set Henry Pu Yi back on a throne in the Forbidden City.

Somewhere in its dazzling square mile of yellow-tiled buildings, Henry Pu Yi was born, son of the favorite grandnephew of the ancient Dowager Empress who made him heir to the Dragon throne of the "Great Pure" dynasty and all its treasures. In its interminable throne halls, temples, palaces, marble courts and concubines' quarters the Boy Emperor lived. Except for U. S. and European soldiers who looted it during the Boxer Rebellion, not 20 white men in the world had set foot in that forbidden preserve until the fall of the Empire in 1911. Until 1911, it contained the greatest assemblage of treasure: gold, jade, precious stone, porcelain, ancient paintings, carvings, that the world has seen since the fall of the Mogul Empire in India.

Henry Pu Yi was allowed to remain in a corner of the Forbidden City until 1924, when Christian General Feng kicked him out and into the arms of Japan. But ever since the fall of the empire the more portable part of his inherited treasure has been dribbling away, a Ming vase here, a jade bowl there. Even so, enough remains to dazzle the eyes and tire the feet of the most ardent tourist.

The Nationalist Government was bound last week that if Henry Pu Yi is to return to his old home in the spring, that home will be empty. They had still another reason for moving the treasure. Nanking, the ramshackle half-rebuilt new capital of China, has always been jealous of the solid magnificence that the Manchus gave Peiping. With the Forbidden City treasure to deck Nanking (there is as yet no fit place in Nanking to display it) the new city will have the dignity befitting a great capital.

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