"Shamelessness of Generals"

The Japanese advance which rolled down through Shantung intending to capture Suchow (TIME, Jan. 17) was badly behind schedule last week and Chinese guerilla warfare was getting into its stride, in both north and central China. Large guerilla forces reportedly recaptured Hoh-sien, some 35 miles up the Yangtze from Nanking, surrounded Tsining in Shantung.

Once a war gets into the guerilla stage accurate coverage becomes impossible, and correspondents settled down for a long siege of guessing. They were certain that 1,000,000 rifles had not just been passed out among the Chinese peasantry, an impossible fantasy which Chinese newsorgans gravely reported as a fact. Another wildly absurd claim which appeared in the Chinese press was that a 2,500-mile railroad between China and Soviet Russia would be completed within three months.

Meanwhile, however, rumors that General Han Fu-chu, the able, progressive former Governor of Shantung, had been executed for failure to resist the Japanese (TIME, Jan. 24) were followed last week by definite news that he had been executed at Hankow by a firing squad. Said Shanghai's Daily China Press, which the distant Chinese Government still controls: "The shamelessness of many Chinese generals in the recent past is indeed appalling. Even in the days of the defunct [Imperial] Manchu regime responsible generals were wont to resort to suicide in attempts to redeem their personal honor.

"Since the establishment of the Republic not a single military officer of any standing has ever committed suicide because he lost territory or for defalcation of duty. It follows then, that if in them a sense of shame was not born it must be instilled in their minds by an example such as is now provided by the execution of Han Fu-chu."

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