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leave the security of the Government Civil Hospital
in Hong Kong and return to Canton; indeed, it is
doubtful whether, unless the situation radically
alters, he will assume duty, as had hitherto been
expected, as chief of the Kwangtung administration. Generals Li Tsung-jen and Pai Cheung-hsi are both still in Kwangsi.
4. My informant further says that the Wu-han troops, defeated by Marshal Chiang Kai-shek at Hankow, have only lost about ten thousand men, and are still an army-in-being amounting to more than one hundred thousand men. Marshal Chiang did not defeat them by fighting, but by laying out the sum of three million dollars in bribery. This Wu-han army is endeavouring to make its way south, in order to join the Kwangsi group under Generals Pai Chung-hsi and Li Tsung-jên. If they succeed in this manoeuvre there will be a very considerable body of troops in Kwangsi province hostile to Marshal Chiang Kai-shek, and it is anticipated that Marshal Chiang would not dare to lead an expedition into South China to fight the Kwangsi Generals there, because, if he did so, Harshal Feng Yu-hsiang would undoubtedly take advantage of the opportunity to occupy Nanking, and thereafter attack him from the rear. Moreover, General Ho Chien, who is understood to have about 10,000 Hunanese troops under him, cannot move the whole of his forces against Kwangsi, because he is obliged to resist the attempt of the Wu-han troops to retreat through Hunan into Kwangsi.
5. it is generally believed that the Kiangsi and Yunnan provinces are on the side of the Nanking Government, while the Ssu-ch'uan and Kueichou
provinces