The statement issued in Nanking on January 27, to the effect that Marshall Wu Pei-fu had decided to emerge from his retirement to accept the chairmanship of a new Pacification Commission, and in fact to become the head of Japanese controlled areas in China now appears to be premature. The Marshal, despite the great pressure which the Japanese are reported to be exercising upon him, has not yet surrendered, and while it is possible that ultimately he will do so, his latest statement seems to suggest that he is insisting upon terms which have not yet been agreed upon by the Japanese. In it the crucial passage is the following:—
There are three prerequisites to any successful efforts to make real peace:—1, real Force; 2, a suitable place, and 3, real political Pohe place is undoubtedly Peiping, and there is no doubt I can wield real force. But there remains the question of real political power.
I have heard that tne Japanese military headquarters will return real political power to the Chinese. After this is done their aim of saving China and making. peace can be realized. if that statement means anything at all, it means firstly, that the Marshal has no mention of beconüng a mere puppet of the Japanese high command, secondly that he will not agree merely to accept a post at Kaifeng, away from the suitable place of Peiping for the establishing of a governnent, while, thirdly, he makes it quite plain that he intends whatever regime may be et up under him shall be supreme over the others which have been established. With regard to this last he will undoubtedly be apposed by the leaders of the temporary governments which the Japanese have already established, for the Marshal obviously demands complete agreement before he moves. That view is supported by the text Xf the manifesto which the Marshal issued on January 26 in reply to Chang Tien-to and sixteen other You have en the tiative for peace to save the Chinese peop! from unspeakable afflictions and have encouraged me to join in the task, for which I am in complete agreement with you.
or the sake of maintaining national soverelgnty as well as of restoring peace, I am prepared to suiter whatever difficulties may arise. I earnestly desire t our colleagues in South China should rise to their fee: and enlighten the soldiers and the people. It is now high time that toin peoples should stop hostilities and preparations for future warfare. If an agreement is reached among various circles, I would gladly comply with your Wish for China's so!
That is most definitely not an acceptance of the role the Marshal was invited to assume. At the most it is conditional upon the agreement of the other leaders in the areas controlled by the Japanese, and it is unlikely that this agreement will be reached, in view of the rivalry between the present leaders of the Japanese sponsored regimes. who hope to keep Marsha: Wu out of power in Nanking or Peiping, and the faction supporting him for leadership of an eventual amalgamated government. Those men who up to the present have sought to establish provisional regimes under the Japanese have adopted an entirely different outlook from that of Marshal Wu. They have it fact accepted positions without any real political power, providing merely a Chinese facade to what is in effect Japanese government. It is clear that the Marshal contemplates taking no such subordinate posi tion, and his demand for real political power is to be accepted hot only as a veiled objection to being sent to Kaifeng with mere military power to "pacify the country," but as an insistence upon the recognition of the real sovereignty of the government which Marshal Wu may consent to form. In this respect there is a wide divergence between his views and those of the Japanese who are pressing him to come forward. They would desire pacification first and the granting of real political power afterwards, but there is no guarantee that once the precess of pacification had been completed they would consent to the granting of the third of Wu Pei-fu's prerequisite. If behind all the pressure which is being applied the Marshal sees merely an attempt to use him as a catspaw to secure that pacification without which the Japanese position in the north will remain as insecure in the future as it has been in the past, he will probably not be very far wrong, and his insistence upon securing political power first is to be taken as an indication that he is by no means sure that if any other method is adopted he will ever get it. He has, of course, the example of Manchuokuo before him, for it is idle to assume that the government of that state has anything of the kind, Taking a broader view the policy of the Marshal seems to be aimed at bringing about a state of affairs in which the whole of China can ultimately achieve peace. He sees that Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek will never negotiate with any government established in the occupied areas which is obviously without sovereignty, and merely as a trap of the Japanese. On the other hand a government in Peiping endowed with the real political power which the Marshal requires might, but only might, be something different. In any event it would establish a bridge between Nationalist China and the Japanese, and possibly be productive of a compromise which might bring peace to this distracted country, but on the other hand the grant of real political power would mean the conferring upon such a new government a degree of independence which the Japanese cannot possibly contemplate, for it would amount to a complete negation of their present policy. There can be tvery little doubt that the emergence of such a man as the Marshal from his retirement, and the active assumption of real government would be a most important thing in the eyes of many Chinese. Of the various figures in China there are comparatively few who by their past history are as able as he to command the respect of his countrymen. There would undoubtedly be a great deal of criticism levelled against him for doing so, but if he gan secure the terms he wants that criticism would have very considerably to be modified. It is to be hoped, however, that he will insist upon his terms, and will refuse to assume office should he fail to secure them, for it is entirely out of keeping with the history and the dignity of the man that under the title of Pacification Commissioner he should undertake the task of suppressing his nationals engaged in quite effective guerilla warfare, for that, if he does go to Kaifeng, will be all that he will be doing.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.