The General's Lady

Lieut. General Pao Chi-huang, tall, good-looking and vigorous, was a bright rising star in the Ministry of National Defense. As chief judge of the ministry's security section, he did a brilliant job, won promotion over the heads of others to become judge advocate general of the Defense Ministry. There he was in charge of the prosecution of security and espionage suspects. In beleaguered Formosa, no man holds such a job unless he has the full confidence of both the Generalissimo and his mistrustful elder son, Lieut. General Chiang Ching-kuo, who has overall charge of security matters.

Pao's rapid promotion went to his head. Though he had a wife of his own, he fell in love with the wife of a civil official. Conveniently, her husband happened to be in jail, sentenced to life imprisonment for corruption in rice transactions. The husband was ill, and customarily, such ailing prisoners are released after a few years. But General Pao blocked his release, and the husband died in prison. Some of the husband's friends, who came from the same part of northeast China as he, demanded an inquiry in the legislative Yuan. They were sure that he had been kept in prison so that 44-year-old General Pao could enjoy his wife's favors without inconvenience. Pao was arrested. Further inquiry showed that the high-living General Pao had extorted money from other men accused of crimes.

Last week a secret military tribunal pronounced Pao guilty, and recommended to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek that Pao be executed by a firing squad. Chiang, bitterly aware of what corruption had done to his mainland regime, is grimly determined that it will not happen again. Pao was the first official of high rank caught and convicted while in office. Hundreds of minor officials have been shot for less corruption. In Formosa's teahouses, Lieut. General Pao was considered as good as dead.

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