In Kunming, home of China's greatest universities in exile, 20,000 students were on strike. They were demonstrating for civil peace, and in their action they spoke for most of China's inarticulate people.
For eight years the students and their professors, who trekked from Peiping. Tientsin and other northern cities, had lived a lean and patient life in Kunming. When V-J day brought not peace but internal strife, they stirred restlessly.
Their professors petitioned Chiang Kaishek and Mao Tse-tung to settle the domestic quarrel. Last month, in defiance of an official ban, the students paraded in the streets. Soldiers fired rifle volleys in...