As sharp fighting raged between Japanese and Chinese last week in Tientsin worried U. S. citizens in this great Chinese city decided they would be safer if they showed the Stars & Stripes, discovered that the only purchasable U. S. flags in town were all stamped "Made in Japan" and offered by genial dealers who had jacked up the price of a small flag from $1 to $3—about the weekly wage of a Tientsin coolie.
President Roosevelt meanwhile was taking no chances with U. S. warships in Chinese waters. The U. S. S. Augusta, flagship of the Asiatic Fleet, was ordered out of Tsingtao and steamed rapidly to Vladivostok on a "goodwill" voyage to Soviet Russia. Even more pointedly the U. S. S. Tulsa, which was steaming toward Tientsin to give her gobs the pleasure of shore leave amid its Chinese night spots, was ordered to turn tail and steam for Chefoo.
In Tokyo members of the Japanese Parliament, when they anxiously inquired whether President Roosevelt was going to decide that a state of war existed in North China and invoke the Neutrality Act against both belligerents, were told by Foreign Minister Koki Hirota that "apparently" such is not his intention.
Peace Preservation Corps. Japanese never tire in their efforts to find Chinese who will act as trustworthy puppets, and in the past two years they have equipped with Japanese rifles, Japanese cartridges and even Japanese machine guns several thousand Chinese known as the Peace Preservation Corps of "General"' Yin Ju-keng (TIME, Dec. 2, 1935 et seq.). Toothy Mr. Yin, who looks most of the time like a startled rabbit, is a Chinese with a potent Japanese in-law who became a "general" overnight by so styling himself, and by the grace of Japanese bayonets. He was ruling uneventfully last week in his strategic bailiwick which lies close to Peiping on the north and east, when suddenly his Peace Preservation Corps, every man a Chinese, started using their Japanese weapons against the Japanese garrison at General Yin's capital, Tungchow.
This "Chinese treachery," as indignant Japanese at once branded it, was smartly timed. About 3,000 Japanese troops recently made up the garrison, but 2,900 had just marched away to help suppress "rebellious Chinese" trying to strike a blow for their country at nearby Nanyuan. It was all in the day's work for the Japanese garrison of 100, although taken by surprise and outnumbered by 10-to-1, to stand off the Chinese. These peppered the Japanese barracks with their machine guns, then entrenched themselves in nearby cornfields over which four Japanese planes circled around & around, bombing the Chinese until Japanese re-enforcements rushed up to relieve the garrison. Meanwhile wounded Chinese had set off in rickshaws to receive treatment at Peiping, only a 14-mi. run for sturdy Chinese rickshaw coolies. Several of these wounded Peace Preservation Corps heroes were asked by correspondents. "But why did you turn against Yin? Aren't you and he supposed to be pro-Japanese?"