From Our Oun Correspondent.
Changsha, Aug. 31.
I have just got back to Changsha after a stay of two or three weeks in both Peking and Kuling, to find a general expectation that the fighting between Y. K. Tan and H. I. Chao is likely to terminate soon in the defeat of the latter. Gen. Chao only holds the northeastern corner of the province, holds even that with unreliable troops. Only some ten or a dozen of the counties of the province belong to Chao; a few are held by the 2nd_ Division which has proclaimed its neutral lity. All the rest belong to Tan.
Tan's four chief commanders are Chai Chu-yn, who holds the whole of the southwest corner of the province and who is in full communication with Liu Hsi-i at Shenchow and Wu Chien-hsia at Paoking. Chai and Liu _command the whole of the Yuan valley down to Taoyuan, the country immediately above Changteh. The centre of the province is held by Wu, who holds Yungfeng, the important centre halfway between Paoking and Siangtan. Hsieh Kuo-kuang who is with Tan himself at Hengchow is doing most of the fighting and has received a goodly number of Chao's units who have turned over during the fighting.
Chao's own command, until he turned out Y. K. Tan in December 1920, was the Ist Division. When Chao assumed the Commandership-in-chief, he appointed Sung Ho-ken to succeed him. Sung has no desire to fight either Tan or Chao; but he has not been" able to carry his officers with him and his two brigade-generals, Tang Sheng-chih and Ho Yao-chu are both siding with Chao. Sung has, therefore, fallen ''sick"" and retired to the health resort, Hankow, quite a new role for this important city. Tang is in command at Changteh, and Ho at Anhua and Yiyang, on the lower stretch of the Tzu river.
The general of the 2nd Division, Lou Ti-ping, has been more successful than Sung. His colleagues, two brigade-generals and all their colonels, have joined him in a proclamation that they don't want to fight. Although united in sentiment, they are divided in geography: one part of the men are in Siangsiang, the other in Hohow on the northern border vf the province. Siangsiang, which in the Manchu days had the reputation of being the wealthiest country in the province and which hoasted that "no battalion was complete without some men from Siangsiang," separates Wu Chien-hsia at Yungfeng from Ye i-hsing at Siangtan.
Ye Kai-hsing,.the general of the lst Mixed Brigade, has the scene
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.