Nanking Demands that Part!
Of Army be Disbanded By W, Lewssoun Chengtu, May 22.
Chengtu is going through one of its periodical states of tension. The wildest rumours are flying about; soldiers stand guard at the street corners, merchants are refusing to Jaccept provincial notes. Everybody is sure that things are going to break, though nobody knows exactly why and when it will happen. 'The trouble, if it does come, will be this time not one of.the usual private quarrels of two' warlords, but a struggle between the provincial authorities and the Central Government.
It is said that the main bone of contention is the demand by Nanking for the disbandment of part of the provincial army which is believed to number nearly 200,000 men. Gen. Liu Hsiang himself who is a really sick man—he is suffering from diabetes—probably only" wants to be left in peace, and might be willing to concede the Central Government's demands, But the trouble is that his military henchmen and the not inconsiderable "Szechuen For the Szechuenese" party donot regard their being stripped of power with any degree of satisfaction and are busy urging the general to resist Nanking.
'From what I have seen and heard of the Szechuen troops, T should not think that they' stand a dog's chance open fight with the Central Government forees. There are still, moreover, certain disgruntled ex-war lords hanging around, with armies of their own, who are more likely to come in against Gen. Liu Hsiang than fon his side. An open challenge to Nanking could, therefore, only have tone ending, an ending that, as a matter of tael, would be in the best interests of the people of Szechuen.
But the chief concern of the ordinary citizen is that, whether Aghting did break out or whether Gen. Liu Hsiang accepted the inevitable and ordered the disbandment of his forces, the undisciplined Szechuen soldiery are likely to seize the op-Portunity to break out and loot the city. The situation is thereto precarious, if perhaps not political, at any rate for the peaceable citizens of
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.