Some days: sinee I had a long and interesting talk with gentleman out of Honan, who has been as closely associated with the public life of the province as any one, and who, incidentally, has not very great xeason to love Marshal Feng. personally, yet who could not but bear witness to the fact that Marshal Feng dos not seem to be of a very pronounced "Red" colour. His. inferences were based on the following considerations. When Tang Song-chi's and Chang Fa-kuei's men came to Kaifeng after the retreat of the Fengtien men in the latter days of May and carly Juno, there group of communistically-minded young men, who came out with a very strong stream of invectives against the "imperialists" and their "running. dogs," the Christian leaders and others who had much to do with foreigners in one way and another. There was this group, ready to lead the "communistic troops" to the mission comvounds and billet them there as the most luxurious quarters that could de assigned them. They also proscribed certain of the more moderate Teaders, among whom was the friend she gave me this information. The proscribed men were to be seized, and as a first measure were to be paraded through the streets, with certain very undignified mottoes adorning their persons, Marshal Feng then came out of the west, and immediately these measures against the moderates were dropped, and the "Reds" themselves had to flee or go into hiding.
About two months ago the Margot wind of a plot of the "Reds" to intrigue him into some difficulty, perhaps to make life dangerous for him. Knowing this and the probable source of the plot, the Marshal sent a message to a for~ merly ardent follower of his, who had left one of the most import. ant positions in Sianfu to follow him to Moscow, and was placed by him in the vice-commissionership in Chengchow of the Peasants and Workmens' Union, asking him to investigate this plot and have the ringleaders arrested. That very, night the Vice-Commissioner went into retirement, from which he has not yet emerged.
Thus, though Bfarshal Feng seems willing enough to permit the people to come under a Soviet form Government, and has established the committer form of government for the Province, he wants the Sovietizing to be of @ Chinese type, and not of the Red type, as it is known in Russia, At least that is the purport of all the stories that have been repeated slong this li His Position As a Christian There Is another matter that has become a moot question, concerning the Marshal: that is the question of his Christianity. f Marshal Feng's present type of Christi unity is rent from the cld-time evangelistic type, _gne has to remember that his present line-up is different from the former Ironsides of the old First Kuominchun. The present army has been, rusticating in Kansu for some length of time, and the recruits that have come in for months before the trock through Shensi into Honan, have! had a goodly lot of Mohammedans among them. Tt would be manifestly impossible to carry on the former driilground evangelism with this large percentage of Mohammedans. Undoubtedly, too, the old ardour has been watered down somewhat, for the financial necessities through which his command has had to pass, and the importunities of his officials for funds, have brought changes into the moral administration that the Marshal would not' countenance in the old days,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.