Last July the British cruiser Suffolk was warped to a berth in Portsmouth harbor. While nervous Chinese gentlemen hovered anxiously around, a gang of Royal Marines slowly carried ashore 93 brass-trimmed steel trunks. In those trunks were 21,000 separate pieces of imperial Manchu treasure which, lent by the Nanking Government, were leaving China for the first time in history. To help assemble them, the great Orientalist and retired importer George Eumorfopoulos sold his own collection and hurried to the East (TIME, Jan. 28). All 21.000 were unpacked and spread out last week in...
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