Foreign News: Feng’s Faith

The most famed Chinaman of today is Marshal Feng Yu-hsiang, called ‘the Christian General” and master of the largest personal army in the world (195,000 men). For a generation at least, Christian missionaries have called Feng the “Chinese Cromwell,” rejoiced at his large-scale conversions of his troops to Christianity, and contentedly observed his distributions of Bibles in carload lots. Therefore the shock to Christians was great, last week, when delayed and not positively confirmed reports envisioned Marshal Feng as turning from Christianity to a newer faith.

According to an explicit despatch, the erstwhile “Christian Marshal” recently assembled his staff-officers at Wuyuan and impressively described to them the lifelong development and final state of his Faith:

“As a boy I believed in Buddha, but suddenly my mother fell ill. I prayed long and earnestly, and with full faith before our household Buddhistic idol but my mother died. That shook my faith in idols.

“When I was about eight years of age I was greatly frightened by seeing a snake crawl out from behind some furniture in my room. My cries brought the elders, and they assured me that this appearance of a serpent was a good omen—that it meant I would become strong and great. For a time, in my ignorance, I had a worshipful attitude toward snakes.

“In the Boxer days, I was in the vicinity of Tientsin. By that time I was a grown man, and I could not but observe the home life and serenity of spirit of many Christians whom I knew. After a time I became a convert to Christianity.

“In 1926 I went to Moscow, and the altruistic principles of communism appealed to me. Having been one of the oppressed class myself, I sympathized with Communism and its principles.

“But now that I am back in China, I see the evils of Communism, and I have shifted my allegiance to the Kuomintang Party, and to the Three Principles of the late Dr. Sun Yatsen. These principles now suffice for me, and I think that after long searching I have found what most appeals to me as truth.”

Sun Yat-senism is practiced by leading statesmen of the present Chinese Nationalist State as equivalent to a religion. Similarly the statesmen of Soviet Russia repose their faith in Leninism. The embalmed corpses of Dr. Sun and Nikolai Lenin are preserved in their glass-topped cases near Peking and at Moscow; and are periodically adored as the elements from which sprang, respectively, Chinese Nationalism and Russian Sovietism.

The Three People’s Principles of Dr. Sun Yat-sen are: Nationalism, Democracy and Livelihood.