Fighting in the civil war in China is growing more
severe. Shanghai is threatened if the defending forces should be beaten and their refugees come back into the town. Marines, however, have been landed and the whole volunteer and police force mobilized. It would be futile for us to try to give a comprehensible account of the general situation. True, the facts of the case, as they are stated in messages from China, are simple enough. There are three principal parties in China—(1) the Chihli party, led by General Wu-Pei-fu, which is in close relations with the Central Government at Peking (indeed it is said that that Government consists merely of its puppets) ; (2) the party of Chang Tso-lin, which holds the three northern provinces without the Great Wall (this party, defeated in 1922, was driven back to this northern region, but Chang Tso-lin managed to consolidate its position there and has since by efficient administration managed to restore his party's shattered forces). The third great faction is that of Sun Yat-sen, who nominally controls the southern provinces, but whose powers seem - largely to - have lapsed.
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