Ma's Roadwork

It was only 15 years ago that one of the many Ma family warlords sent word through the hills and in three weeks raised a fanatical army of 60,000 Chinese Moslems. Looting and terrorizing, the rebels nearly conquered a northwest China empire half as big as Europe before being defeated by the "Christian General," Feng Yu-hsiang. Last week another of the Ma clan, once-rambunctious General Ma Puching, peacefully accepted appointment as Commissioner of Reclamation in the dreary swamplands of Chinghai Province near Tibet.

First reports indicated that General Ma, whose clan holds the power of potentates among China's 15,000,000 Moslems, had submitted to banishment by Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek. Actually the "banishment" was a tribute to the Gissimo's policy of giving Moslem leaders authority with responsibility. For it was General Ma who in 1937-39 dismounted his cavalry and put them to building the Kansu-Sinkiang highway over which Russian supplies traveled to the Chinese army. Now, with Russia embattled and the Burma Road closed, General Ma was again being asked to do the impossible. Nearly cornered, China must get war supplies from India. Off to put down a roadbed for trucks where Marco Polo's caravans once traveled went onetime warrior, wartime roadbuilder General Ma.

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