"Widest Democrats"

A luscious and loud onetime social worker is Mme Chang Hsueh-liang, wife of the "Young Marshal" who recently kidnapped China's Dictator (TIME, Dec. 21). It finally seemed safe for her to return from abroad last week and back she came. Kidnapper Chang, having been sentenced to ten years, then pardoned but deprived of his civil rights for five years, had these rights restored to him last week by order of Kidnappee Chiang Kai-shek and Nanking wiseacres thought Chang would soon be War Minister.

Dictator Chiang, whose favorite means of assuring himself that he is still The Boss is abjectly to resign "all my offices," did so again last week and was expected to resign at least once more. This was good Chinese tactics since the often-postponed Kuomintang Central Executive Committee-- roughly corresponding to a Chinese parliament or assembly --was at last meeting in Nanking and it behooved the Dictator to intimate politely that he is a miserable worm, thus provoking exquisitely complimentary replies.

A feature of the kidnapping at Sian was that Kidnappee Chiang let Kidnapper Chang read his daily diary for the past year. Last week, in an abridged pamphlet form, the Dictator's diary was distributed to all Kuomintang delegates with ironclad injunctions to secrecy. It was supposed to prove to the Kuomintang, just as it was previously supposed to have proved to Kidnapper Chang, that the Kidnappee-Dictator never was a sell-out to Japan but in his daily thoughts and deeds is a true, brave Chinese. Dictator & Mme Chiang made their first joint world radio broadcast last week, she in flawless Eng lish, he in Chinese. Static made it diffi cult to gather more than that they are still strong for their famed "New Life Movement," a form of Christian Chinese Puritanism.

Mme Chiang has a most violently outspoken and un-Christian sister in Mme Sun Yatsen, widow of the founder of the Kuomintang. It was established with money from Moscow, though Founder Sun tried unsuccessfully to borrow elsewhere first. Since Dr. Sun was an unpractical visionary, his death in 1925 greatly advantaged the Kuomintang, enabled such practical leaders as China's present Dictator to turn the memory of Sun into a high-powered political cult, resembling the Communist cult of Lenin. In 1927 practical Chiang broke sharply with Moscow. Last week what he seemed to be doing behind his fac,ade of New Life Movement broadcasting was to sound out the Kuomintang Central Executive Committee thoroughly as to whether or not in 1937 Nanking should end its ten-year tiff with the Soviets and team up with Moscow once more, this time for aid in a Chinese war with Japan.

Dr. Sun's widow, who all these years has maintained her Moscow contacts and who is after all the sister-in-law of the Dictator, sounded off at Shanghai thus: "Some of China's political leaders are victims of the fear-of-Japan sickness! . . . Today Japan is incapable of waging a long war because the Japanese people oppose war and their politicians are in revolt against the army. . . . Japan is technically backward and numerically inferior and the decisive factor is that the Chinese people are now ready to fight to a finish!"

This remained to be seen as the Nanking Government continued in delicate negotiation with the Chinese Communist Armies near the kidnapping centre, Sian. Significantly, the official 1937 Moscow thesis for Communists throughout the world--the thesis that Communism and Democracy are "on the same side of the street" while Fascism is "on the other side of the street"--was spouted by Sian's Chinese Reds last week in almost the identical words of U. S. Red Earl Browder, who announced not long ago: "The Communist Party declares that the issue is 'Democracy v. Fascism,' not 'Communism v. Fascism.' Communists advocate the widest Democracy."

It seemed likely that China's Dictator would soon take a walk for the first time in ten years down Moscow's side of the street as a "Widest Democrat."

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