Photographs by W. Lewisohn The death of Marshal Wu Pei-fu, China's warrior-poet, on December 4, was widely mourned by the Chinese. He was immensely- popular among his fellow-countrymen. One of the most picturesque warlords of the old days, he was also one of We stron: est willed. It is understood that he had repeatedly and adamantly refused to associate himself with th" efforts to form a new central government in China, declaring on every occasion that all he wanted to do was to live in retirement in Peiping. Born in 1872, Marshal Wu became a soldier at the age of 20, graduating from the Peiyang War Academy at Tientsin. It was not, however, until 1915 that he became widely known when he was ordered to suppress a revolt in Yunnan arising from Yuan Shih-kai's claim to the monarchy. Some years later he was made the instrument in crushing General Chang Chun's efforts to restore the monarchy. In 1919 he marched against Canton; in 1924 he combatted the Manchurian forces under Marshal Chang Tso-lin. In 1927 he was defeated by General Chiang Kai-shek and retired to exercise his exceptional talent for poetry, painting and calligraphy. Marshal Wu was a first-class fighting man, and in many a scrap in Szechuen and Hunan he fought, sword in hand, at the head of his troops. In fact that was how he ended his last fight—against the Nationalists. He alone of the long procession of rapacious and greedy tuchuns of the twenties never tried to make his personal fortune out of politics. He went out of public life as poor a man as he had entered it. (An account of the funeral appears in the news section).
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.