China's new Premier, moonfaced, middle-aged Dr. H. H. Rung, welcomed to bomb-peppered Hankow last week his highly-revered young relative, Duke Kung, the handsome head of the House of Kung, which is revered because it descends from China's greatest sage, Confucius (Kung Fu-tze, died 478 B. C.), of whom Duke Kung is the 76th lineal descendant.
The Duke had escaped by special train from Shantung Province when the Japanese marched in fortnight ago, blasting the ducal seat near the Sacred Mount Taishan, where some 10,000 descendants of the Sage are buried. In 1936 the Confucian Society of Japan got the boy Duke to come to Tokyo and dedicate a shrine to the Sage. Ever since there have been rumors that Japan was persuading the Duke to let her set him up as puppet ruler of China.
"I have never even been approached by the Japanese!" indignantly declared young Duke Kung, surrounded by a crowd of his venerable advisers who had fled with him to Hankow. "I consider myself at the orders of the Chinese Government. I am a patriot, ready to take up arms and fight the Japanese as soon as I reach the age of military service—that is 18 years. . . . My wife is expecting a child."