Awjul Onus

(See front cover)

A keen little Japanese general, trim if tubby, bustled about Hongkong last week, the confident swish of his great-coat followed by hate-glinting Chinese eyes.

Japanese explain General Kenji Doihara to Occidentals as "our Lawrence of Manchuria." It was perfectly all right, they say, for Great Britain to detach Arabia from Turkey during the War by sending Colonel T. E. "Lawrence of Arabia" to stir up the tribes. Therefore has not General Doihara's work in Manchuria, Japanese ask, been equally all right?

Subtle Doihara may or may not have provoked the "incident" at Mukden (TIME, Sept. 28, 1931) which enabled Japan to set up Manchukuo as a puppet state. He was chief of the Japanese Army Secret Service in Mukden at the time-- the service which makes incidents. Few months later Doihara was in Harbin before those unfortunate outbreaks of "banditry" which caused Japan to take that strategic city on the Chinese Eastern Railway (TIME, Feb. 22, 1932). Later it was perhaps Doihara who fomented enough "unrest" in Tientsin to excuse the bringing in of Japanese troops who imposed the humiliating Tangku Truce (TIME, June 5, 1933).Today, so great is Spy Chief Doihara's reputation that he can be as modest as Colonels Lawrence and Lindbergh. Toothily last week he smiled: "What have I been doing this year in Peiping, in Tientsin, in Shanghai, in Nanking and here in beautiful Hongkong? Really, gentlemen, I am but a general! What has a general to do in time of peace?"

In the Japanese Diet nervous politicians have also been asking what General Doihara is doing in China. In effect Foreign Minister Koki Hirota, author of Japan's notorious Twenty-One Demands on China a generation ago, has been obliged to admit that the Japanese Army has sent General Doihara as its own independent negotiator in the Sino-Japanese diplomatic haggle now being conducted as a repetition of the "demands" maneuver (TIME, Feb. 11). The Japanese Army apparently does not trust the Japanese Foreign Office or Japanese diplomats. With something as big as the Empire's future in China at stake, the Army has sent to the diplomatic front that Japanese general who knows best how to make himself useful in peace time, Doihara.

Hongkong Hu. General Doihara, in his role of the Japanese Army's diplomatic Shanghai Lily, matched wits last week with Hongkong Hu. It is Mr. Hu Han-min's distinction that he was the late, sainted Dr. Sun Yat-sen's Chief Secretary and that today his influence in Canton is worth a $200,000 bribe proffered him last year by the Chinese Government (TIME, July 23). It would be cheaper to jail or exterminate Mr. Hu, but he is careful to live in British Hongkong, with strapping Sikh police posted day and night before his strongly built house, all doors and windows of which are barred with elaborate iron gratings.

If Canton and its clique of South Chinese generals can be sold, Hongkong Hu is the man to make the sale, discreetly. Last week he received General Doihara behind his iron gratings, then puffed an impressive smoke screen of anti-Japanese fulminations.

"Japan must abandon her attitude of dominance in the Far East!" cried Hongkong Hu. "She must drop all pretensions to sponsorship of an 'Asiatic Monroe Doctrine.' This ambitious doctrine--tantamount to Japanese assumption of superiority in the Far East--must be dropped if fruitful collaboration between China and Japan is to be realized."

The bluster preceding Hongkong Hu's "if" could be discounted. What came after was of vast importance. It implied that Canton, which for four years has baited the Chinese Government at Nanking with charges of "treachery to China," charges of "supineness toward Japan," may now be ready to yield to the blandishments of Tokyo and its Shanghai Lily. Such a development, in which monstrous Japanese bribes would play an inevitable role, may well prove for China the turning point in her 20th Century history, a turning toward Asia for Asiatics with Japan at the controls.

Canton, because it is the farthest metropolis on the China coast from Japan and therefore least apt to be attacked, has been loudly, blatantly anti-Japanese. If even Canton is wavering, Japanese diplomacy could chalk up a major victory last week in Nanking, the "Capital of China" which strongly rules Central China, preponderates in the North and makes noises intended to sound like rule in the South.

"While So Many Starve." In Nanking the President of China is a personage venerable and quaint. President Lin Sen has the archaic beard and lineaments of a Chinese scholar of bygone days. He is philosophical, reflective, expressionless. He is Old China. On his round-the-world trip in 1929, Mr. Lin with gentle insistence curbed the lavish hospitality of his expatriate Chinese hosts. "In this hard year of 1929," said he, "let us not spend our time and our money upon fine banquets and rich food while so many starve."*

Nanking has an ornate and splendid new "White House," but President Lin modestly resides in a rented house. The White House, he seems to feel, should be occupied by the Nanking Government's real boss, Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek. But the Generalissimo's pose is precisely that he is not President. Last week the Chinese Communist armies, which the Government reports "almost exterminated" every few months, were again giving Generalissimo Chiang so much trouble that he placed himself at the head of forces rushing to avenge the murder of an Australian missionary. Left in command at Nanking was the versatile and brilliant Premier of China, Mr. Wang Ching-wei. Today he is carrying the awful onus of secret negotiations with Japan, fateful to China's whole future--the future of the most populous nation in the world.

Soapboxer. Premier Wang's fine, sensitive and mobile face easily reflects a whole gamut of New Chinese emotions utterly strange to Old Chinese President Lin. Of the two, Premier Wang is by far the better educated by Western standards, but compared to President Lin, he makes the impression of a boy soapbox orator. This being the decade of glorified soapbox orators, supple extemporizers and disarming demagogs, China has in Mr. Wang a statesman several cuts above the accepted thing in an up-to-date Premier. For one thing, he not only obeys according to his lights the famed will of China's late, sainted Dr. Sun Yatsen, but he is more than suspected of having written his political Testament, read it to Sun upon the Saint's sickbed and obtained the August Signature none too soon.

The will of Saint Sun has definitely Communist leanings, enjoins China to cooperate with Soviet Russia and with Germany which Saint Sun expected to continue Socialist, not foreseeing Hitler. Last week famed Imperial German General Hans von Seeckt, he of the genial monocle and steel-trap brain, retired from China's service after putting Generalissimo Chiang's armies into the snappiest, most efficient shape ever attained by a Chinese force. Although von Seeckt leaves a junior German officer in China as his successor, Japan is strenuously pressing Premier Wang, who is also Foreign Minister, to clean out the Germans and appoint Japanese military advisers to China's Armies.

Reasons for Assassination. To one school of Chinese thought what Japan now proposes is tantamount to asking China to abdicate her sovereignty. Last week Chinese anxious to know the mettle of the Nanking Government might well conclude from a study of Premier Wang's career that he at least is of whalebone. He has always bent easily, but he has always snapped back. His philosophy of statecraft, ably summed up last year by Vice Minister of Foreign. Affairs Hsu Mo, is that colossal China can afford to take daring and dangerous risks in gambling with small Japan because "in the end China can't lose!"

Premier Wang, unlike most foreign-educated Chinese, has his cultural roots in French literature (he speaks no English) and he used to call himself "Henri Waung." In 1903 he graduated from Tokyo Law College and attached himself to Dr. Sun. In 1909 he rushed to Peking for a bold effort to assassinate Prince Regent Chun, father of the Boy-Emperor who was then China's Son-of-Heaven, now reigns as Manchukuo's puppet Emperor.

Nabbed by the Imperial police, who dragged him before the Prince Regent, Would-Be-Assassin Wang was asked by His Highness: "Why did you wish to take my life?"

Quick-witted, he replied: "There are so many reasons. With your permission I will write my answers." So decadent was the Manchu Court that audacious Wang, instead of being beheaded for the capital crime of attempting the life of the Prince Regent, was permitted to paint his reasons at such length and in such exquisite characters that His Highness was charmed, condemned Wang to mere life imprisonment from which he was soon released by the Chinese Revolution of 1911.

Wang Snaps. As the most Communistic of Saint Sun's disciples. Mr. Wang led an exciting life after the Sun-begotten Nanking Government put aside Communism and began beheading Communists (TIME, April 25, 1927).

Every few years Generalissimo Chiang used to get so furious at silver-tongued, influential Mr. Wang that he would send him on a lavish "sick leave" to Europe with his expenses paid. Today the Premier has a fancy for Germany and his son is singing student songs at Heidelberg.* As recently as 1932 the Generalissimo became so vexed that Whalebone Wang had to double into hiding in Shanghai's French concession. For weeks Mrs. Wang dickered for her husband's future with the Chinese Government. Fugitive Wang at this time was supposed to feel that with reference to pure, indigenous Chinese Communism the Generalissimo was a reactionary mossback, while with reference to Japanese Imperialism he was a yellow-bellied coward. Then one sunshiny morning Whalebone Wang snapped back into the job he has held ever since, Premier of the Chinese Government.

"Impossible to Subjugate!" Current Japanese pressure on Generalissimo Chiang and Premier Wang began with feelers from Tokyo as to whether President Roosevelt's silver-kiting policy has not so nearly bankrupt the Chinese Treasury that, to keep going, Finance Minister Dr. H. H. Kung, owl-eyed descendant of Confucius, will simply have to raise a $100,000,000 loan. Japan, seeing China pinched to the wall, offered the easement of a loan, but on the security that China should submit to a virtual Japanese protectorate.

Chinese statecraft, whenever Japan tries this old gouge, is to squeal to the other Great Powers that unless they come to her rescue she will cave in to Japan, and then where will their $200,000,000 annual export sales to China be? This traditional Chinese squeal always gets some kind of action, and in Washington the British Embassy was soon in touch with the State Department which "as a matter of courtesy" kept the Japanese Embassy informed. Consequently last week Tokyo papers were spilling over their front pages apparently accurate reports of what King George's diplomats had said in confidence to President Roosevelt's. Scarcely exciting, these disclosures added up to a revelation that the Great Powers think matters will drift for four or five months, thus giving Japan that much time to make her deal with China; that the Great Powers are disposed to loan money themselves, possibly in conjunction with Japan, only if there is real danger that Nanking will cave in to Tokyo.

In Nanking, Premier Wang did not cave in but he said he was yielding to Japan in important respects, the quid pro quo not being evident last week, unless "Shanghai Lily" General Doihara had spread important slush around in Nanking and Shanghai.

The same Mr. Wang who in 1932 said, "Japan may send millions of troops but shall find it impossible to subjugate China! . . There shall not be and there cannot be direct negotiations between China and Japan!" has now been himself negotiating with Japanese emissaries and his words in 1935 are, "We shall do our best with Japan to ease economic tension in the Far East."

The proposed terms of easement, obtained in Shanghai from a high Chinese source:

1) Complete cessation of anti-Japanese agitation in China, and inauguration of a publicity campaign for Chinese-Japanese understanding.

2) Japan to give credits to aid China in its financial difficulties.

3) Japanese advisers, financial, economic and military, to replace other foreign advisers, particularly the German Military Mission which has been training Chinese Government soldiers for years.

That such terms are even being considered by Generalissimo Chiang and Premier Wang constitutes almost a double bend of the Chinese Government Whalebone. But can China lose? In the past Japan has often tried to loan her way to Chinese hegemony, pouring into China over $3,000,000,000 with all sorts of strings attached, strings which subsequent Chinese Governments blandly snap. In Manhattan what could be called the reaction of informed U. S. tycoons accustomed to doing business with China was neatly capsuled by the Herald Tribune thus: "If she [China] is left to her own devices she can be trusted to sign no bargain which she cannot subsequently denounce or evade."

Pleased with the new Japanese-Chinese bargain now under discussion, General Doihara beamed in Hongkong, "Our relations with China are much better." In Nanking, impatient for his big loan, Chinese Finance Minister Kung deplored the impossibility of screwing silver out of the Chinese people as President Roosevelt screwed gold out of the U. S. people, threatened to go through the motions of taking China off the silver standard and establishing a managed currency. Dryly commented the world's famed "Money Doctor," Princeton Professor Edwin W. Kemmerer, rehabilitator of a dozen currencies and an expert on China's: "A managed currency is not at all well adapted to China's needs or to her people's characteristics. . . . If, however, China remained on the silver standard she would be sure to suffer when the accumulated hoards of 'dead silver' in the United States Government's vaults are thrown back on the world market and the price of silver slumps."

*In the single Chinese province of Anhwei, 250 miles remote from Nanking, 3,000,000 Chinese were last week reported starving. "It is distressing to walk the streets these days with misery and Death everywhere," reported George Birch, China Inland Mission worker. "Two-thirds of this area is without food and the remainder is approaching the same condition. I hear such things as five of a family of seven starved to death. A man climbed a hill to cut fuel and fell dead. Women with babies, exhausted and despairing, laid down to die." *The President's adopted son, James Lin, postgraduates at Columbia. Said he of his father in Manhattan last week: "He neither smokes nor drinks. His only hobby is curio collecting. Every evening from 7 to 8 he sits with his curios. Sometimes he will set out a rare piece he has recently acquired and leave it out for a few days, but after that it goes with the others into a big box."

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