Soong Comes Home

The Nanking Government's Finance Minister, owl-eyed, stubble-haired T. V. (Tse-vungj) Soong, left war-torn China last April to see what the world thought of China v. Japan. While he was talking in clipped Harvard English in the Foreign Offices of the U. S., Britain, Germany, France and Italy, his superior, Nationalist Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek, made truce with Japan (TIME, June 5). Since then Japanese have loudly applauded Chiang's ''reasonableness," confessed their "satisfaction"' with the attitude of Huang Fu, chief of the North China Political Council. Japanese diplomacy was making rapid headway among Nanking officials. Pacific-minded Premier Wang Ching-wei took over the Foreign Ministry. But last week there was tense anticipation in Nanking. Across the Pacific steamed the S. S. President Jefferson bringing home able Minister Soong, famed for his uncompromising policy toward Japan. Japan cocked a belligerent eye on "any new developments in China's political situation that may occur subsequent to the return of T. V. Soong." Unofficial plans were made to have Minister Soong stop off in Tokyo for quiet conversations with Japanese officials. But when the S. S. President Jefferson docked last week in Yokohama, Minister Soong refused to leave the ship.

Homing Minister Soong was a man to be feared last week. In the U. S. he had negotiated a $50,000,000 loan from Reconstruction Finance Corp. on condition that he control its spending on U. S. cotton and wheat. That was enough to empower him to line up Nanking politics almost any way he liked.

While Minister Soong was away, famed "Christian" War Lord Feng Yu-hsiang had been active too. Big and bluff, he is a typical North Chinese but he has the nimble brains of such Southerners as Chiang Kaishek. When last month he suddenly ended his bluff as Commander-in-Chief of a People's National Salvation Anti-Japanese Army, pocketed the People's contributions and showed a smiling face in Peiping, he announced that he was going into retirement on the Sacred Mountain of Taishan, in Shantung. Last week his smiling face emerged Cheshire Cat-like again from the mists of Chinese politics. Presumably as a reward for quitting his "private war" against the Japanese, General Chiang last week offered him a choice of three big jobs in the Nanking Government: 1) Inspector General of the Army, 2) Commissioner of Forestation and Colonization for the Northwest or 3) Improvement Commissioner for the Yellow River, which burst its dykes in July, and last week was still boiling. Observers expected Feng, licking his chops over this choice of plums, to choose the job of Inspector General of the Army.

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