There has never been a great deal to be made of the scanty news which, we get from independent sources of "Nationalist" troop movements, and we cannot expect anything from the ficial agencies that would even suggest defeat, but it now seems per. fectly clear' that Chiang Kai-shel withdrawal from Nanking coincided with the retreat towards Shanghai fof all the armies which joined: him in April in setting up a Nanking 'regime and in defying the authority of the Hankow Reds. One can no longer believe that Chiang alone withdrew voluntarily to make pos sible a grand Kuomintang coalition against the Shantung forces, otherwise there would not be much point in the retreat hither of the several Kuangsi commanders who should be the front, if there is one, nor of the very big movement, of retiring ies to Chinkiang, Soochow and all other points on the railway. It looks to us as though Nanking, administrative centre, is inthe bands of commanders who have gone wer to the Hankow faction and that Chiang Kai-shek's anti-Red commanders have nothing to do now but submit to this new authority, which has nothing to do with what} was the Nanking regime, or get out; and that the bulk of them have chosen the latter course. The an-ouncement that General Ying-ching had assumed command Nanking and called a conference will have been noted. General Ho is very decidedly of the Red! School. He is a native of Kueichow, Dut he came up through Fukien and Chekiang with a compact little army! of Russian trained Cantonese liberally salted with Whampoa Cadets, and, while Cheng. Chien got most of the notoriety for taking! Nanking, Ho Ying-ching got the credit from Moscow. His high adviser Cherpanoff, infantry" expert, was decorated with the Order of the Red Flag, 1st Class, for the actual feat of taking. Nanking. What has obviously hap-Kai-shek and rivero badly defeated north of the Yangtze by the various Northern armies and retreated en bloc to Nanking. where! those of a Red political temperament announced that they were ing to stay and make terms with mentioned. After all, there many other names which can be used—names equally likely to attract altention—that only the rest exercise of imagination is! required to find' a desirable one. [Possibly swe shall be told that this is not so easy as it seems, going on' the principle of suburbanites at Home who can never escape from the glamour of such a name as "The Laurels" for their semi-detached villa, but still there can be no harm in atrial,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.