These territories were to have been held in fief from Nanking, of] course, and while Feng is not quite ready even yet to forfeit the advantlage of the Kuomintang's blessing upon his conquests, it was evident months ago that he did intend to have Shantung first and Peking later by right of conquest or conspiracy and not az a gracious endowment from Nanking, with an army of Nanking civil appointees around him devouring the revenues, spying} on him and cramping his style. dash for Tsinanfu, when he tried to get and hold the Tsin-Pu railway in Shantung ahead of Chiang Kai-shek exposed his hand and netted him nothing, for the Tsinan incident established the Japanese on the Kino-Tsi railway and with them has no desire to share Shantung, while Lu Chung-lin's defeat Changteh forced a complete withdrawal from "China's Holy Land."
Now Feng mirist have a port to be! a really big figure so, with Tsingtao in pawn to the Japanese, he simply had to have Tientsin and, without much concern for Yen Hsi shan's rights under the alliance, he set out to get it. He was doubtless aware of the tentative understanding between Yen Hai-shan and the young Fengtien leaders, and knew, when the latter began' to withdraw, that] he could come within striking, distance of both Peking and Tientsin without much opposition from first class troops, if ho again cut across country and moved against units like the Shantung-Chihli troops that were not included in the alliance and whom Fengtien was not loth to
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.