'The news reports of the past few' days have indicated with more than! ordinary assurance that General Tang Song-chi's defeat and elimination from public affairs in Central China is certain. This in itself wil be regretted by very few persons. For a small man, with no particular] background, Tang Song-chi has been overwhelmingly ambitious, of no great military value and loyal to} one. Not much more than a year ago he Loasted that he would, President of China within a year. He was then in the south of Hunan' with about ten thousand men, begging for Cantonese support in his rebellion against Chao, Hene-t, then Wu Pei-fu's subordinate.
Know from the documents <eized in the Soviet Embassy in Peking that the Reds most strenuously opposed any movement of Cantonese Kuangsi troops to his support. They knew enough of him then to know that he was no asset and could not be trusted. Chiang Kalshek saw in his rebellion against northern authority an opportunity' to push into the Yangtze Valley and i-North campaign in spite of Soviet protest. Perhaps} Borodin disagreed with the Embassy in this matter and backed Chiang, in his determination. In any event, Tang Song-chi, who had been badly defeated in his single-handed attempt on Changsha a little while before, was carried into the Yangtze jon the wave of the Cantonese advance, thanks to the latter's Russian training, equipment and actual direction in the field. Since then th Hunanese have distinguished them selves chiefly by perpetrating the worst of the minor and major out~ rages. On the drive up the Peking-Hankow Railway into Honan they suffered enormous losses in their] encounters with the Fengtien troops before the latter were forced to! retreat by Yen Hsi-shan's threat to] cut their communications, and would probably have been annihilated had ft not been for the support given by Chang Fa-kuei's Cantonese} forees. During latter months, with the departure of the Russians and the withdrawal of all the Cantonese troops from the Hankow area, Tang. has been thrown entirely upon his own unsteady resources and one had! only ta give him a shove to topple] him over, He has no friends. He] has deserted and turned against the Communists and the Nanking brand of "Nationalists." The Kueichow, and Szechuan troops that are pouring in from the west are, at least nominally, adherents to Wa Pei-fw jand have taken his home base, Chang Last year Tang was a rebel against Wu Pei-fu. The Nanking forces are closing in on him' from the east with ease and] rapidity. It would look as though' his Nemesis were upon him. The! telegrams report that the Hankow] Chinese are distressed by the prospect of more turmoil incidental to another change of masters. wonder how the discouraged foreign merchants in: Hankow and the dis. heartened members of the former} British Concession Council feel about it,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.