¶ Like a rabbit in the outstretched arms of a magician, Grand Admiral Yang Shu-chuang, Commander-in-Chief of the Chinese Navy, vanished in broad daylight last week at Foochow.
Members of his staff professed themselves as mystified as any necromancer’s audience, began a frantic search of Foochow and vicinity.
Two days later at Nantai, ten miles from Foochow, a telegrapher started back pop-eyed when asked to send the following message:
The President,
Nanking,
I have escaped from my kidnapers.
Yang
Grand Admiral
¶ The Chinese Government’s brusque decree abolishing “extraterritoriality”* (TIME, Jan. 6) drew such stiff protests from Washington, London and Japan that its execution had to be definitely stayed (TIME, Jan. 13). Last week the great powers were tongue-lashed by the Chinese official who is a sort of Chief Justice and Attorney General rolled into one, Dr. Hu Hanmin, president of the legislative Yuan or council.
“Outrageous!” exclaimed Dr. Hu. “Our judicial system is superior to those existing in Japan and Turkey when the powers allowed those nations to take full jurisdiction over foreigners [respectively in 1899 and 1926]. … It is unjust and unreasonable for the powers to insist on the retention of extraterritoriality in China on the ground that our laws do not exactly resemble their own.”
¶ A temperature of slightly less than Zero Fahrenheit in the famine areas of Shantung, Shansi and other North China provinces last week killed some 15,000 starveling humans. The ears of the world are deaf to this particular need for charity because it has persisted for so long (TIME, Jan. 23, 1928 et seq.). Even the Red Cross has ceased to give aid. Now and then it should be remembered that roughly 12,000,000 Chinese stomachs are suffering the gnawing pains of slow starvation. Use less to repeat that thousands of parents are eating their children when they can catch them, thousands of young people gnawing their grandparents as they fall. A population greater than New York plus Chicago is slowly sinking below the level of dog-eat-dog to Death.
* I. E.: The right of foreign residents in China to be tried in their own consular courts.
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