Truce v. Salvation

On clattering wooden geta the little old men who act as newsboys in Tokyo ran through the streets last week shouting an extra. It was the first direct word that either Japan or China had had of an event that seeped to the rest of the world several days earlier: truce and cessation of Chinese-Japanese hostilities in North China.

Officers of the Nationalist Government and Japanese met secretly at Hwaiju. 30 mi. north of Peiping. and agreed verbally to the following terms:

1) Chinese forces would remain south, Japanese north of an imaginary line from Yenking, 45 mi. northwest of Peiping, through Tungchow, 13 mi. east, to Ningho, 30 mi. northeast of Tientsin.

2) Chinese "volunteer corps" in the war area would be disbanded. China promised to suppress anti-Japanese boycotting and other activities.

3) Japanese troops would withdraw to the Great Wall as soon as convinced that

China had lived up to her part of the bargain.

To save Chinese face, no details of the truce were published, and Japanese troops that had been pressing down from the Great Wall made no entry into Peiping. BUT by terms of the ever useful Boxer Agreement Japan has the right to increase her legation guard at any time. At Peiping's Chienmen Railroad Station 600 stumpy little Japanese soldiers detrained from Tientsin, marched through the streets with full equipment to strengthen the guard. Very quickly it became apparent that they would not be idle. Japanese patrols spread through the native city, taking over Chinese police posts, searching houses for Chinese snipers. Before breakfast Col. Ibara, commander of the legation guard, led a squad into the house of China's best-known living philosopher, owl-eyed Hu Shih, cross-questioned him for over an hour.

Foreign officers in Peiping were plainly worried. In normal times there are nearly twice as many U. S. Marines in Peiping as any other foreign troops: 408, as compared with 277 French, 238 British. 177 Japanese, and 95 rather lonely Italians. The Japanese were acting as they acted in Shanghai year ago. but there were no warships handy to reinforce other legation guards.

Meanwhile the truce was far from stopping gunfire in China. No sooner did the terms leak out than Chinese war lords were snapping at each other like angry clogs. At Hsuanhuafu, on the Peiping-Kalgan Railway, General Feng Chan-hai (of the "Big Sword" volunteers), leading his Japan-battered troops down to Peiping, met General Fang Chen-wu and his private army going up to Kalgan. The two forces clashed. General Fang hoping to seize control of North China. Meantime the able Cantonese 19th Route Army was still making its way slowly north with the rumors gaining daily strength that its real object was to fight not Japan but Nan-king's Chiang Kaishek.

It was the opportunity of a lifetime for the canniest Chinese in the North, "Christian General" Feng Yu-hsiang. Lying low for many months, his great private army was slowly reduced to a "bodyguard" of 3,000. After three weeks of strenuous recruiting, he suddenly smashed out with blazing denunciation of Chiang Kai-shek as a traitor, announced undying opposition to Japan, sent circular telegrams for assistance to every war lord in sight and appointed himself Commander-in-Chief of a People's National Salvation Anti-Japanese Army.

"Every person," cried he, "who consents to making terms with the Japanese is my inveterate and eternal enemy."

Generals Fang Chen-wu and Sun Tienying promptly joined Salvationist Feng with' 40.000 men between them. First move of the trio was to cut the railway lines between Peiping and Buijan, dig in. From two other potent War Lords, no friends of Chiang Kaishek, no word had yet been heard--General Han Fu-chu of Shantung and General Yen Hsi-shan of Shansi.

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