access to the sea, Marshal Feng had to rely for his supplies of arms and ammunition on his Soviet neighbours. These supplies, which consisted chiefly of rifles, machine guns and small arms ammunition made in Austria (Czechoslovakia) during the war. reached the Kalgan Suiyuan Railway after being transported across Mongolia by camel-back and motor car from the Siberian Railway, via Verkhne-Udinsk, Kiakhta and Urga.
7. For their part, the commanders of the Second and Third Kuomin Armies did not long remain idle. In March General Hu Ching-yi (Military Governor of Honan Province and General Officer Commanding the Second Kuomin Army] obtained control over the whole of Honan by driving out of the western part of the province certain Shensi troops, who, under the command of General Han Yu-k'un (a subordinate of the Tupan of Shensi) had occupied Loyang and Kunghsien (where Wu Pei-fu's old arsenal was situated). This movement was expected to precipitate a conflict between Marshals Chang Tso-lin and Feng Yü-hsiang by leading to the intervention of the former in Honan, but the death of General Hu Ching-yi on the 11th April relieved the situation temporarily, although Marshal Chang, as stated above, extended his influence along the Peking-Hankow Railway to Paoting-fu. It was generally thought that General Sun Yüeh, who had been forced to retire from Paoting-fu into Honan, would be appointed by the Central Government to succeed General Hu Ching-yi as Military Governor of Honan, but after some delay the post was given to General Yüeh Wei-chün, commanding the Second Division of General Hu's army. General Sun Yüeh was appointed Civil Governor of the province and Bandit Suppressor of the Provinces of Honan, Shensi and Kansu. This post did not satisfy him, and he retired for some time, nominally on the ground of ill-health, but really to make preparations for the invasion of Shensi
8. The tension between Marshals Chang Tso-lin and Feng Yü-hsiang had, by the middle of May, reached a point where a rupture seemed inevitable, and the former actually delivered an ultimatum to his rival, calling upon him to withdraw his troops from the capital. A resort to arms was avoided by a compromise, and at one time it even seemed possible that the two military leaders would sink their differences and make common cause against Great Britain in the campaign of furious denunciation that arose out of the Shanghai riots of the 30th May. Fortunately for British subjects in North China, Marshal Chang, who had arrived at Tien-tsin on the 29th May, viewed with deep aversion the activities of the agents of the Soviet. who eagerly offered to Marshal Feng their aid in men and money in effecting his declared intention of driving the British out of China. During the next two months, as the uproar grew louder and louder after the shooting incidents at Hankow (the 11th June) and Canton (the 23rd June), Marshal Chang made insistent overtures to His Majesty's Legation in the hope of obtaining a promise of support from His Majesty's Government in the event of his attacking Feng Yü-hsiang. Unable to obtain any such promise, he returned to Mukden on the 23rd July, fretting at the growing power of his rival.
9. He had reason to be apprehensive, for a well-marked consolidation of the power of Marshal Feng and his allies was taking place. General Sun Yüeh, com manding the Third Kuomin Army, threw off the mask of retirement and boldly invaded the Province of Shensi, occupied the capital of the province, drove out the Military Governor, and, by the middle of August, was in control of the whol province. The Central Government, whose authority had been thus openly flouted. made the best of a bad business by officially appointing General Sun Yüeh on the 29th August Military Governor of the province. On the same day Marshal Ferg was appointed Military Governor of Kansu and confirmed in the appointment of Tupan of North-West Frontier Defence. Thus, by the end of August, the Kuomin army commanders occupied the Peking-Kalgan-Suiyuan-Paotou Railway, and part of the Peking-Hankow Railway, and were in nominal control of the Province of Kansu and of the vast regions of the north-west, as well as being in actual control of the Provinces of Shensi and Honan; while the Mukden army occupied the railway from Mukden to Shanghai, in addition to the Three East Provinces of Manchuria, and controlled most of the Provinces of Chihli, Shantung. Anhui and Kiangsu. In the last named province, General Lu Yung-hsiang, who, though mere cypher, had retained the title of Military Governor, was definitely succeeded! | the post at the end of August by Marshal Chang Tso-lin's chief of staff, Genera! Yang Yu-t'ing.
10. By this time disturbing rumours had been reaching Peking of the forms tion at Wuchang (Harkow) at the end of July of a secret defensive alliance of
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several provinces of Central and South-West China under the leadership of Marshal Wa Pei-fu, followed by a conference of military leaders at Chikungshan, in the south of Honan Province. These rumours, following as they did representations made to the Central Government by the leaders of the Chihli party, Generals Sun Chuan-fang (Tupan of Chekiang), Chou Yin-jen (Tupan of Fukien), and Hsiao Yao-nan (Tupan of Hupei), urging the release of ex-President Ts'ao K'un from custody, caused the Government no little anxiety. Marshal Wu Pei-fu, since his defeat in the autumn of 1924 by Chang Tso-lin aided by the treachery of Feng Yi-hsiang, had been living in retirement at Yochow (in the north-east of Hunan) on the Yang-tsze River, where he had been visited by a constant stream of politicians; and it was known that he contemplated returning to the political arena as soon as a suitable opportunity should present itself. Such an opportunity came sooner than was expected. General Sun Ch'uan-fang (Chihli party), Military Governor of Chekiang Province, whose troops occupied some important points in Kiangsu, south of Shanghai, had long been chafing under the advance of Fengtien troops into that neighbourhood. To meet the menace created by the continued arrival of reinforce- ments from Manchuria, who were distributed in the province south of the Yang-tsze, The made counter-preparations by moving up troops from Chekiang Province. The situation was hardly improved when, by a presidential mandate, dated the 29th August, General Yang Yu-t'ing was appointed Military Governor of Kiangsu, and another Fengtien general was appointed Military Governor of Anhui For a short time General Sun made some pretence of welcoming the appointment of General Yang, who had been one of his schoolmates, but it was obvious that their relations were strained, and the Chief Executive sent emissaries not only to Sun and Yang, but to the Military Governors of Honan and Hupei in the hope that an open breach between Chihli and Fengtien might be avoided. Whatever chance there was of avoiding such a breach disappeared when the Government, on the 7th October, issued an order for the arrest of four prominent politicians of the Chihli party on a charge of nulawful conspiracy to overthrow the Government. General Sun's troops were at once mobilised, and, on the 16th October, occupied Shanghai, from which the troops of General Yang Yü-t'ing, who appears to have been prepared for this move,
withdrew in haste. (See "Civil War section of this report.)
South China.
11. South and South-West China suffered throughout the year from armed strife, from which the governing party at Canton emerged victorious. On the death of Dr. Sun Yat-sen at Peking, on the 12th March, the control of the Kuomintang égime at Canton was vested in a committee of five, of whom the Acting Generalissimo, General Hu Han-min, was made president. Their policy was declared to be that already formulated by their late leader and embodied in a document referred to as his political will or testament to co-operate with those nations that treat China as an equal, to secure for the Chinese people freedom, and quality with other nations, and to hasten the summoning of a genuine People's Conference in order to effect among other things, the abrogation of all unfair reaties. The employment in Government posts of Soviet agents, of whom the most otorious was Borodin, and of a number of Germans and Russians in various dvisory positions in the Canton municipality and in other offices, was part of this olicy. The only serious opponent of the Government at Canton, General Ch'en Chiung-ming, was driven out of the province after two campaigns.
12. His first attempt during the year to advance on Canton was made at the end of January. His troops, who had remained inactive for some months along the Canton-Kowloon Railway, opened the offensive at the end of January. They were met on the 4th February by a counter-offensive, losing Sheklung on the same day, and the whole of the Canton-Kowloon Railway, as far as the Hong Kong border, by the 11th February. Advancing eastwards, the troops from Canton took Tamshui on the 14th February, invested Waichow, and, on the 27th, secured command of the sea-coast by the occupation of Swabue. In the middle of March Swatow itself was ccupied. General Ch'en fled to Amoy, and his troops were dispersed to the Kuang- ang Fukien border. A diversion, presumably intended to be in Ch'en's favour, was
tempted in Kuangsi at the end of January, but also ended in failure.
13. Meanwhile, General Tang Chi-yao, Military, Governor of Yunnan Province, who, in October 1924, had been offered by Sun Yat-sen the post of Vice- generalissimo of the Kuomintang forces, was attempting to assert his claim to the
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