CHINA: President Resigns

Best, most honorable of Chinese War Lords is great Marshal Yen Hsi-shan, famed “Model Governor” of rich and peaceful Shansi Province, almost the only part of China not ravaged by incessant civil war. Last week Yen came out at the small, painful end of a spacious adventure. He had captured Peking, proclaimed himself President (TIME, July 12), sought to make all China a prosperous Shansi—and miserably failed.

As troops which were not his closed in upon Peking last week “President” Yen proclaimed his resignation, withdrew to Shansi with a loyal army. After him scuttled his whilom “Prime Minister,” the recently proud and pompous Wang Ching-wei. Strapping Marshal Feng Yu-hsiang, ally of Yen, famed master of “the largest private army in the world,” covered the ex-Presidential rear.

Paradoxically, Yen’s resignation, his evacuation of Peking were not decisive, rather the reverse. The old city’s new master is a human enigma: Marshal Chang Hsueh-liang, War Lord of Manchuria, from which his wellarmed, well-fed troops arrived by the thousand in swiftly chuffing freight trains.

In Nanking, seat of the central Chinese “National Government,” recognized by the U. S., headed by stalwart little President Chiang Kaishek, jubilant mobs hailed the new status of Peking as meaning that “their” troops were taking it over. News extras said that Manchuria’s Chang had accepted the rank of “vice commander of the Nationalist army & navy”—that is to say, he had climbed off his neutral fence, proclaimed himself a 100% Nationalist.

In the north this was not so sure. Peking tingled with tales of a secret pact between Yen and Chang. The young Manchurian, it was said, would hold Peking during the winter, nominally as a Nationalist, actually biding his time. In the spring, when Chinese wars begin, he would see. If by that time the Shansi marshal and his great ally Feng had recouped their strength, Manchuria’s Chang might join them in a new attempt to capture all China.

Yen, Feng and Chang are Northerners. North and South China are agelong foes. But last week Southerner Chiang Kaishek, President at Nanking, could at least boast that he had broken and hurled back if not destroyed the armies of Yen and Feng which last spring seemed bent on his extermination. Next spring will be another spring.