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But after thunder last week came rain. Promptly at 9:30, on the morning after Wang announced his order, terrorists sprang out of a side street opening into Hankow Road and hurled four hand grenades at Shun Pao's office. Eight Chinese were wounded.
Three days later a slim, elegant little Chinese newsman, Samuel Chang, sat down to tiffin in a German tea shop on Bubbling Well Road. Up stepped a stranger, whipped out two guns, and pumped four shots into Samuel Chang's back. Then the assassin rushed into the street, followed by another patron. Turning, he put two bullets in his pursuer's stomach, and fled. Newsman Chang died instantly, his champion (a Pole named Vladislav Krasson) an hour later. A graduate of Columbia University's School of Journalism, 40-year-old Samuel Chang was a director of the Shanghai Evening Post & Mercury, and agency superintendent of Owner Starr's Asia Life Insurance Co. (Chang's wife, a graduate of the University of Utah, is the daughter of a Chinese doctor in Salt Lake City.) He was also a friend of New York Times Correspondent Hallett Abend.
Shortly after midnight next morning, in an apartment on the Japanese side of Soochow Creek, Timesman Abend was packing trunks, making ready to move into the International Settlement, when a fist pounded on his door. He opened it, saw two Japanese in civilian clothes with drawn revolvers. One of them struck Newsman Abend on the head, the other wrenched his arm behind his back, demanded: "Where is the anti-Japanese book you are writing?"
Abend produced the manuscript of a book about Frederick Townsend Ward, U. S. soldier-adventurer who once led a Chinese army to put down a rebellion, died 78 years ago. The Japanese took charge of the manuscript (representing nine months' work by Author Abend), ransacked the apartment, wrenched out the telephone, gave Abend's head another cuff, his arm another twist, departed.
Back of last week's Japanese campaign of terror against U. S. newsmen and their Chinese friends was believed to be a 39-year-old Vice Minister of Propaganda for the puppet Government, Tang Leang-li,
28 who fancies himself a Chinese Goebbels. Born in The Netherlands Indies under the Dutch flag, educated in Britain, Austria, Germany, Puppet Tang has long admired Nazi methods.
As a follower of Wang Ching-wei, he denounced Japanese aggression until Wang deserted the Chungking Government, took up with Japan. Two months ago he started the Chinese News Agency, which hopes to absorb all domestic & foreign news channels in China. Last week Wang's Tang, having made friends with Japan, attacked "American imperialism" in the Japanese-controlled part of China's press.