Foreign News: Five Bars Hoisted

Chefoo—where the hair nets come from —was the scene of lively doings last week. Away from this flourishing city in the Yellow Sea vamoosed its rightful defender, General Liu Chen-nien; and victoriously in marched dread Marshal Chang Tsung-chang (TIME, March 7, 1927). Within an hour Chefoo’s terrified Chinese Chamber of Commerce had presented the marshal with $100,000 spot cash gold, in return for his promise not to issue his favorite order, “Loot!”

A waste of breath would be to rehearse the villainy of Chang, his cupidity, his habit of snatching concubines out of perfectly nice Chinese families. The man is a double-dyed dastard. As military gov-ernor of Shantung Province under the late, great War Lord Chang Tso-lin (TIME. July 2), Marshal Chang Tsung-chang bled the people to ruin and starvation with outrageous taxes before he was driven out and forced to flee to Japan (TIME, Sept. 24) by the present Nationalist Govern ment at Nanking. The return of Dastard Chang from Japan at the head of a band of military adventurers (TIME, March 4), and his capture of Chefoo last week bode untold evil to the wretched, famine-stricken people of Shantung. Cowed by the scowling marshal, who chews fat Havana cigars and particularly likes to spit brown in people’s faces, they could only groan, “How do the wicked flourish!” Shrewd as well as ruthless, Chang Tsung-chang at once ran up the five-barred flag which used to stand for the Chinese Republic ten years ago, but has stood for every kind of despotism since. One or two gullible correspondents, new at the Chinese game, soon described this shameless old flag-waver as the “Democratic Marshal.”