Sorrow for Old Chiang

War bulletins pouring into Nanking continued bad. The Communists were driving a corridor through fertile Shantung; Communist divisions, held up by this month's thaw and mud, were massing around Mukden for a spring offensive.

These disasters shaped the mood of the delegates convened at Nanking for China's first National Assembly. Out of the clamor of more than 2,500 peoples' delegates --talking, questioning, accusing, cursing--arose the authentic voice of China. Its tone was laden with tragic discontent, and with something close to despair.

Four-star General Pai Chung-hsi, Minister of National Defense, reported rather perfunctorily on military affairs--somehow he skipped the war situation in North China and Manchuria. A Manchurian cried: "We are losing, nonetheless! Who are the criminals responsible?" The hall resounded with yells of "Find out! Shoot them! Shoot them!"

Morale and a Man's Head. Speaker after speaker took up this theme, lashed at "Mistakes, mistakes . . . Corrupt, lawless high officials have lined their pockets while the troops hunger, lose discipline and morale . . . They have transformed Manchuria into a hell. . ."

Ailing General Chen Cheng was savagely criticized for his failure while commander in chief in the northeast. Screams rose for his execution. "We must restore morale with a man's head . . ." Many pleaded for the arming of village militia--why did not the government trust the people? A Kirin man recited a bitter song sung by "abused, ill-equipped local forces." The song:

Some say we are government soldiers.

But where is our government pay?

Some say we are wicked bandits.

But where are our bandit guns?

Some say we are Communist raiders--

Old Chiang, Old Chiang, we are sorry for you.

Next morning, able O. K. Yui, Minister of Finance, thrice advanced to the platform and thrice retreated before a barrage of yowls and hisses from the floor. One excited delegate jumped up to the mike, crying: "The country is almost lost! How can we talk about moneybags? To save the country is the important thing." Honan delegates stood up, howling: "Our homes are in danger!" and started a walkout. Shantung men called for reinforcements. Shansi wanted more bombing planes. Mongols and Turkis asked if the government had forgotten that the northwest was a gateway to the Chinese heartland. "Trust us ... arm us and we shall fight the Communist bandits."

A Fur Coat for Cumshaw. But the ultimate protest did not take place in the Assembly Hall. It worked itself out in a cheap hotel in a grubby lane of Nanking's crowded red-light district (nicknamed "Confucius' Temple").

After the stormy Assembly session, Rung Hsien-yung, 70-year-old Manchurian delegate, returned to his dingy hotel room. A onetime guerrilla leader against the Japanese, bald, illiterate Kung had returned to the northeast after V-J day, organized 20,000 militiamen, but had been dropped from the army under Chen Cheng. Fellow Manchurians whispered that he had been dismissed for failure to produce a fur coat as cumshaw for a certain superior. Today his son was in the hands of the Communists. At the Assembly, Kung had asked querulously: "Who can recapture the northeast so we can return to our native places?"

None could answer., "All's finished!" aged Kung muttered. He bought a stout straw rope. In the solitude of his room he munched bananas, drank tea, then tied the noose around his neck and hanged himself from a ceiling beam.

Kung's suicide caused a stir of indignation. A Manchurian delegate bitterly proposed that newspapers headline Kung's obituary: "A hero's life for a fur coat."

China's First. The delegates' tense rebelliousness carried over to the discussion of constitutional amendments. The pro-and anti-amendment supporters soon swapped blows amid shouts of "Get down! Get down!" and "Free speech! Free speech!" In the midst of the pandemonium, Chiang Kai-shek strolled in, made a little speech: "... I have come today as a plain citizen. You here must be a model for all your countrymen. . . . Don't let what has happened here today happen again. Otherwise you will become the laughingstock of all the world . . ."

Two days later, the delegates made it clear that their anger was directed against inefficient and corrupt underlings, not the Gimo. Though he had said he did not want the presidency (TIME, April 12), he later let his name be entered. Chiang Kai-shek won a landslide victory (2,430 to 269) over Chu Cheng, president of the Judicial Yuan, to become China's first constitutionally elected President.

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