Resist! Resist!

China has never won a modern war, but two years ago in the smoke and flame and searing Hell of Japan's avalanche against Shanghai she whelped a towering hero, General Tsai Ting-kai of the deathless 19th Route Army (TIME, Feb. 22, 1932). Last week on the Olympic he steamed into Manhattan and Chinatown went wild. Rich merchants had hired a suite for their hero at the tall-towered Waldorf-Astoria. They sent three planes with Chinese pilots roaring down the bay to dip and zoom in welcome. As the Olympic drew in, 4,000 jubilant celestials jammed the pier and Chinese drivers of a motorcade of 200 cars pushed down the buttons of their horns, kept them down.

Six thousand more Chinese made bedlam as General Tsai was driven through narrow Chinatown streets plastered with his portrait in vivid yellows and greens. "There never was anything like it!" said Detective Daniel Devoti of the Chinatown squad. "They are giving General Tsai a bigger welcome than they gave 37 years ago to the great Viceroy Li Hung- chang!"

Next day at City Hall, tall, quiet General Tsai, who speaks no English, produced a startling impression on Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia who had heard that his guest is a man of 41, the veteran of 172 Chinese campaigns in which he has been more than 50 times under fire.

"General Tsai," exclaimed His Honor involuntarily, "I didn't expect to see a youth!"

Only when the General rose at the Hotel New Yorker to speak in Chinese to a great Chinese Charitable & Benevolent Association banquet, did Tsai reveal the drive, the mighty earnestness and kindling magnetism of the Hero of Shanghai. No representative of China's Government was present. Also pointedly absent was little General Chang Fat-hwai of the Government's "Ironsides Division." who arrived in Manhattan fortnight ago to study U. S. military methods, and may be made War Minister when he returns to Nanking. Shanghai was supposed to be Hero Tsai's theme, but the Chinese Government knew that he was going to speak his mind about Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek.

No statesman, General Tsai has no patience with what he considers to be Generalissimo Chiang's policy of "selling out" China to Japan little by little, thus gaining respite in which to organize and unify China's factions in the vast territory which is left. With passionate invective, firing his points explosively in Chinese like cannon balls, Tsai accused Chiang of a series of machinations to destroy the 19th Route Army as the spearhead of Chinese resistance to Japan.

"The so-called Government, while keeping an army of 2,000,000 soldiers, did not send a single soldier to reinforce us at Shanghai and stopped necessary supplies!" cried General Tsai. He traced the repeated efforts of the 19th Route Army, following the signing of peace at Shanghai, to get into action against the subsequent Japanese drive in the north which cost China the remainder of her territory in what is now Manchukuo (TIME, April 24, 1933 et seq.). "In these circumstances," cried General Tsai, "we had no alternative but to establish the People's Revolutionary Government in Fukien. Our one and only purpose was to force the so-called Nanking Government's nation-sellers to correct their errors and return the political power to the people so that the people might save the country." This rebellion Generalissimo Chiang crushed with U. S. bombing planes (TIME, Dec. 11).

"I, thereupon, tendered my resignation as commander of the 19th Route Army in an effort to keep it intact," wound up General Tsai, "but the Traitor's [Chiang's] Government did not stop there. They had signed an agreement with Japan to disband the 19th Route. Since my retirement they have carried out this agreement to the fullest extent. They first incorporated the 19th Route into the 7th Route Army and then destroyed all inscriptions on monuments and buildings put up in memory of the Shanghai war and in honor of the 19th Route Army!

"In other words, they have done their utmost to wipe the name of the 19th Route Army from the history of the Nation! In conclusion, my dear brothers and dear sisters, I say to you: resist, RESIST, RESIST ! We must overthrow the so-called Government at Nanking. You must under stand that if this Government would really defend the country and protect the people I would be the first to support it. But since the Government is selling out China we must oppose it. Let us now resolve to resist the Japanese invaders and save our country!"

Thus Hero Tsai hotly addressed his own people in Chinese. To white reporters he said through an interpreter: "I am just a plain Chinese citizen traveling for pleasure."

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