Dec, 10.
General Fu Tso-yi, who is now' governing Suiyuan Province and is responsible for the successful resistance being put up to the} Mongolian-Manchoukuoan invaders. is a comparatively young man. He, had already made his mark in the field, nearly ten years ago, during the civil war of 1027. The General is 43 years old and was born at. Jungho, in Shansi, in 1893. He Joined the Tung Meng Hui, the: parent organization of the Kuomintang, in 1911, and after graduating. from the Paoling Military Academy. in 1917 he rapidly rose from bat. talion commander to the charge of a division in the army. He was one of General Yen Hsi-shan's_ most trusted commanders. In 1927 he was commander of the 4th Division when the late Marshal Chang Tso-lin was fighting General Feng Yuhsiang, with General Yen Hsi-shan og his not altogether comfortable ally. General Ful Tso-yi was ordered to Taunch a flank attack on Chochow with the object of cutting the Peking-Hankow railway and exerting pressure on the capital. Chochow was captured by General Fu Tso-yi,, but the failure of the frontal attack of the Shansi troops at Shihchiachwang made his position practically untenable. He was therefore penned up in Chochow by overwhelming forces of Marshal Chang Tso-lin's army. He put up brilliant resistance and actually held Chochow for three months with 8,000 troops against besiegers estimated to number 50,000, After the death of Marshal Chang'Tso-lin, in June 1928, and the withdrawal of his troops into Manchuria, General Fu was made Commander-in-Chief of the 5th Army of the 3rd. Group Army under General Yen Hsi-shan's command and also gar~ vison commander of Tientsin. In. the Northern rebellion against General Chiang Kai-shek, in 1930, General Fu was ordered to attack Shantung, but met with reverses. Ko withdrew into Suiyuan and endeavoured to preserve the integrity of the Shansi forees with General Hsu Yung-chang and General Shang Cheng. Later his troops came under the control of Marshal Chang Hsueh-liang. On the reorganization of his army in 1931 he became Commander-in-
Chief of the 35th Army and commander of the 73rd Division as well a member of the North-cast Political Council, Since that time has been Chairman of the Suiyuan Province. In 1933 he became Commander-in-Chief of the Wh Army to resist the advance of Japanese troops in Hwaijow and Changping, and he also directed the operations" of 1934 against Sun Tien-ying in Ninghsia. As Chair~ man of Suiyuan Province General Fu has devoted himself to strengthening the defences of the frontier: as well as to the reconstruction of the civil administration and development of the province. His development plans have included important schemes for the reclamation of land in Inner Mongolia.
Chochow is a walled city in North Hopei 42 miles from Peiping. The siege which made General Fu Tsoyi's name began on October 12, 1927, Jand ended on January 6 with the surrender of the city to the Fengtien troops, after General Fu Tso-yi had signed a truce with General. Wan Fu-lin at the request of the leading citizens of Chochow. The success of General Fu in holding out so) Tong was due to the strength of the defences constructed under ~his orders, They were described in this Journal at the time of the surrender in the following terms:
-..: Most intricate systems of deep hell-proof tunnels penetrate beneath the wall forming the city gates. These deep tunnels communicated with "pill-boxes" 20 yards in front Of the main line of defence formed by the wall. Then there was a counter-mine tunnel to meet every mine the Ankunchun bored towards
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.