Zencdal suddenly efi and Chao Hong-ti assumed control of the Hunan governorship, there would have been very few who would have hazarded the guess that he war entering on the longest spell of governorship that has been maintained by one man since the start of the Republic. As a-matter of fact, he has more than doubled the length that any other governor has Nei on "continuously. Tan Yon-Kei has had three attempts to govern—each time ending failure: twice he was superseded by order of the Peking Government; the third and last time ran away. The other governors have all run away: Tang Siang-min, Fa Liang-tso, Tan Hao-min, Chang Chin-yao and now Chao Hong. all the six men who have tried their hand at "governing" Hunan, What record!
Chao Hong-ti's period of governance has been a very unsatisfactory time of trouble and started in most disastrously. three days, he had disappeared from his headquarters and taken refuze at one of the foreign consulates outside the city. His wou successor came to the conclus in another three or four days, hho was unequal to the task, made his way to the consular tendered apology and Chao his post.
'A Catspaw in Hupeh It_was not long before Chao, much against his own judgment, pushed into the disastrous medellins, with Hupeh, He was used by Wut Pei-fa as a convenient catspaw for turning out the Hupeh governor, Wang Chang-yuan. Wa ordered him to withdraw from Hupeh, just fas he was on the verge of entering Wuchang where he was going to stal his own protege as governor, and, incidentally, where also the Hunan soldiery were to receive the financial results of their glorious victory (the sole reason of the meddlesome interference by Hunan with Hupeh's affairs). Chao's refusal to withdraw led to the most ving defeat and instead of, 1 even more than lenz, overdue wages, the weeks of fighting—some of. which was very severe in its tale of killed and. wounded—were added to the army's unpaid-for labour. Later there came 0% thy period of foolish civil war inside the province, in which a minimum of wounding and killing fell to the lot of the combatants of cither side (and a maximum to civilians—the only wounded officer in the Red Cross Hospital at Changsha during, that fighting was hit by a stray bullet when returning from dinner at a friend's in' civilian clothes!). For a few weeks during the fighting, "kai, his opponent who got no nearer Changsha than Hengshan, One severe famine and just now a time of general distress and high price of food that almost reaches famine limits throughout the vince, indeed, passing inside the limits in places,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.