must step down. Men cannot be degraded and insulted at one's caprice. A government cannot be run as any man's private property. Furthermore, how can you bear to owe your power and wealth to foreign loans and oppressive taxes? When ruin knocks at the door, it will be too late to repair your errors. So we demand that you reverse your course at once, and so order things that the campaign can proceed. That is my frank advice, and I believe that you should heed it.

KUO SING-LIN

Open letter of the Christian General, Marshal Feng Yu-hsiang, to his political opponent, Marshal Chang Tso-lin.

After we had shaken hands, the world believed that we two would live and die shoulder to shoulder for the welfare of our country. Unfortunately you, in your ignoble craving for power, have been sadly misled. No blessings can come to the country from the men who are associated with you and who for years have been your close companions. A general cannot be ordered about by another general. Young men [Yang] who can talk prettily, but who take to their heels as soon as they see the enemy, have been given exalted posts instead of being punished as they deserve. What madness it is for you to act thus! So far as I personally am concerned, I cannot work with a man who does injury to his country and its people. For that reason I have resolved never to place myself in a position where I shall be forced to fight an aggressive war. My desire to coöperate with you was not in order to seize power or to get rid of men who did not agree with us. I shall never renounce the old traditions of our country merely to curry favor with a new clique. I a all not let myself be made a tool. t Ly whole conduct is animated by er padiness to sacrifice my life and all I

own for the welfare of the nation. For this reason I appeal to you once again to reconsider your programme with the true interest of China uppermost in your heart; for Peking, which you are trying to capture, is where our relations with foreign countries focus.

Thy brother,

FENG YU-HSIANG

Marshal Li Ching-lin, whom Marshal Feng Yu-hsiang drove out of Tientsin, to whom it may concern.

Our dear old China has had the misfortune to produce a traitor like Feng Yu-hsiang, who, to state it plainly, has the heart of a devil and the manners of a beast. He has reached his present high position by an accident. His treasons are innumerable. I shall enumerate here only a few of his crimes.

Feng the traitor is a man of the most unscrupulous character. He killed his wife for no reason at all, and he murdered his maternal uncle, Lu Chienchang, and his close relative Yen, with no better reason. Old General Kuo and General Pao were killed by him after the first had offered to surrender and after the second had become his rival following the overthrow of Kai-feng. The death of Generals Tsao and Li, for whom Feng hypocritically professed friendship in order to carry out his designs, occurred under similar circumstances.

Feng is always disloyal toward his superiors. General Chen was robbed by him when they were both in Szechwan. Only last year he sold his master, ex-President Tsao Kun, for $1,400,000. Last month he began to intrigue against a man whom he had constantly asserted he would support. He permitted a mob to besiege the Palace of the Regent.

His conduct toward the dethroned

many other actions of this man are designed to corrupt and destroy China's political morals, her civilization, and her very life.

In view of the critical dangers that threaten the country, I hereby solemnly vow to exterminate Feng, the national traitor - not for any partisan reason, but for the welfare of humanity. I have no personal feud with Feng except as he is an enemy of mankind. I appeal to all who agree with me to join me in crushing this traitor. In conclusion, let me say that any man who favors Bolshevism is my enemy, whom I shall fight with all means in my power. Assistance, advice, or information that will help me to accomplish this will be gratefully welcomed. LI CHING-LIN

WHEN, after considerable delay on account of bad weather, we reached the entrance of the Pei River, we discovered a great fleet of merchant ships from all parts of the world assembled there. The armies of the Christian General, Feng Yu-hsiang, and of Li Ching-lin, the Governor of Tientsin, were fighting farther up the stream. They did not seem to have done each other much damage as yet, but they fired on any vessels passing up the river. So the whole fleet lay here at anchor.

We did not have to wait long, however, for almost as soon as we arrived three Japanese torpedo-boats appeared. They were bringing troops to reënforce their concession guards at Tientsin,

1 From Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Swiss LiberalRepublican daily), January 24

and were to escort the Japanese merchantmen up the river to that city. As they passed us we saw that they were ready for business. Their bridges and decks were protected by rows of sand bags, and their guns were uncovered ready for action. Our steamer and two others flying the Japanese flag fell in immediately behind them.

We proceeded undisturbed, meeting other Japanese naval vessels patrolling the Pei. Tang-ku, where the situation was said to be particularly critical, had been captured by Feng's troops, which made no effort to stop us. Farther up the river we passed the forces of both parties. Now and then a few soldiers would fire a volley, to which the Japanese paid no attention. As we drew nearer the city things became livelier. A continuous roar of artillery

indicated heavy fighting close to the suburbs. The Japanese were obviously nervous. They hastily landed their soldiers whom they had brought from Port Arthur. On shore everything was in the utmost confusion. Men were shouting and troops were marching hither and thither in the most aimless

manner.

We quickly learned what the situation was. General Li's army had been badly whipped, and was pouring back into the city. This threatened to be decidedly unpleasant for the Chinese town, which was likely to be plundered twice, first by its beaten defenders and next by the victorious invaders. That is the custom in China. Generals do not fight to protect cities but to seize them in order to plunder them. The fighting in China is not civil war, but a struggle between robber generals for booty, in which towns, provinces, and the whole country are the pawns. Some Chinese armies do indeed call themselves national troops, but they are really mere mercenaries, induced to serve by force or by promises of high pay and loot. Their pay is very irregular, and the loot must be correspondingly generous to make up the deficit.

Foreigners in Tientsin feared that Li's defeated troops would not only sack the Chinese city, but that they would also overrun the foreign concessions. The latter enjoy the right of extraterritoriality and are protected by their own garrisons or local guards. In view of this danger, all communication between the Chinese city and the European quarter was cut off by barricades of sandbags and barbed wire. The Japanese concession, which was the most exposed, was prepared for a siege and heavily garrisoned with regular troops. The other concessions were defended by local militia.

I found the Europeans almost as excited as the Japanese. Nevertheless,

English, American, and German ladies were doing their Christmas shopping as if nothing unusual were astir - for it was December 24. Those residing in the former concessions of Russia and Austria, which have lost their extraterritoriality rights since the war, were in real danger of being overrun by the Chinese, but the former German concession, which lies between the British and the Japanese concessions, was sufficiently protected by its position.

Things turned out better than we anticipated. Li Ching-lin's retreating troops had no time to do much harm. They were in such a panic that the Chinese police easily kept them under control. Moreover, Feng's troops, who arrived immediately on their heels, maintained strict discipline. Soldiers with great executioner's swords were stationed all over the city to behead on the spot anyone detected plundering. On Christmas Eve the newspapers printed casually that only in a few exceptional cases had it been necessary to behead a pillager on a street-corner.

Feng's army certainly made good its reputation for strict discipline. Not a word of criticism could be applied to its conduct toward the civilian population. This was something hitherto unheard of in China's civil conflicts, as was likewise the fact that the troops that surrendered were treated humanely and paroled.

I watched Feng's forces march into the city. It was just like seeing a European army take possession of a town, except that these troops did not bring their artillery with them, and that almost every soldier carried a gray umbrella. Another unique feature was the long trains of pack camels. These awkward, rusty-brown beasts, looking remarkably like llamas, were as novel a sight for the Tientsin public as for ourselves.

Although the defeated troops had

done very little plundering, I saw many ridiculous scenes on the streets. In their panic the fleeing soldiers threw away their caps and stripped off their uniforms to escape identification as members of Li's army. But that did not solve the problem for them. A Chinese soldier without a cap or uniform by no means looks like a civilian, with his long cotton gown. So the soldiers held up any Chinaman they met and stripped him of his outer garments. It was certainly a grotesque sight - hundreds of frightened Chinamen running through the streets in all directions half clothed and wrangling over such garments as they had, right in the midst of winter. The episode did not last very long, however-partly because the police stopped it, and partly because every civilian vanished promptly from public sight.

Notwithstanding this ridiculous prelude, the native population was not in a mood to see much humor in the situation. Although it had suffered exceedingly from General Li's extortion, it did not want a change of government. For every new general who gets possession of a city in China manages to amass a private fortune of several million Mexican dollars in a very brief period. His methods are simplicity itself. Shortly before evacuating Tientsin, for example, Li demanded $1,600,000 from a wealthy Chinese family. The victim had no choice but to pay it. So the people naturally count on similar exactions from the victors. Every tuchun levies taxes and exacts forced loans that are rarely repaid. Moreover, he frequently issues paper money that loses its value the minute he is deposed.

[THE author is a well-known Japanese physician practising in Mukden.]

WHEN I was at my hospital in Mukden on the morning of November 20, I received a telephone message from General Kuo, who was then at Tientsin at the head of eighty thousand picked Mukden troops sent by Marshal Chang to attack Marshal Feng Yu-hsiang, asking me to come quickly to see him, as he was suffering from gastro-enteritis. My frequent visits to Marshal Chang had made me acquainted with General Kuo, and I had had occasion to examine him two or three times before.

From Chugai Shogyo, translated in Japan Weekly Chronicle (Kobe Anglo-Japanese weekly), January 21

I was about to start for Tientsin by the 10.15 A.M. train on the following day, when I got another telephone message from him, this time from Luichwang, saying that he had moved there from Tientsin, and asking me to come quickly, fully provided with medicines, as no drugs were to be had in the out-of-the-way village where he

was.

I did as I was asked, and reached his headquarters on the twenty-second, where I found him in one of the two first-class carriages connected to a military train of a dozen cars, nursed by Mrs. Kuo and other attendants. He looked pale and considerably emaciated. Tapeworm was the cause of his complaint. This greatly weakened him;