CHINA: Closed Door

For more than a year, a tight little group of U.S. consular aides had lived and worked in the tower-topped Glen Line Building on Shanghai’s teeming Bund. One day last month, U.S. Consul General Walter P. McConaughy hauled down a tattered flag, locked the doors of his offices and left. For the first time in over 100 years, no U.S. flag flew over a diplomatic post on the Chinese mainland.

Later that same day, McConaughy and his staff boarded a train for Tientsin and the U.S. liner General W. H. Gordon. Last week, the General Gordon nosed into Hong Kong Harbor bearing U.S. diplomatic personnel, and 660 other refugees from 26 nations.