National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

days. When would everything be settled, so that I might set off before it became too warm? Liu Fu answered: »In a week. » I asked him to give me his hand on that. He did so, and the others nodded assent. When could the Chinese scientists be ready to start? Three or four days after the decision.

I was to receive a written reply after four days.

The negotiations thus seemed to have taken a favourable course. The American Minister, whom I met shortly afterwards, congratulated me and wondered how my position would affect Roy CHAPMAN ANDREWS and his expedition.

WARNINGS

The political tension was increasing, although life in Peking was much as usual. The German Minister, DR BOYÉ, advised all German subjects to leave for the coast, but left them free to decide the matter for themselves. EwExr ör, our envoyé, gave similar advice to the Swedish missionaries: »Situation dangerous; Swedish subjects must themselves decide whether they will leave or stay ». The German Minister advised me to leave it to the discretion of the German members in the expedition whether they would leave China or stay behind. I considered it to be my duty to follow this advice, as no-one knew what might happen, and I was able to wire to Pao-t'ou the more freely as I was convinced that not a single one of the members of the expedition would use the liberty that was offered, but that everyone would unhesitatingly stay behind. To give a definite order to stay would have meant accepting the responsibility for a situation of whose outcome I was completely ignorant. An order to return home was of course out of the question. In my telegram I added only that for my own part I intended to yield to nothing less than absolutely insuperable obstacles.

RAID OF SOVIET EMBASSY PREMISES

On April 6th an unheard-of event took place. Marshal CHANG Tso-LIN gave orders for the police and the military to make a raid and occupy the offices of the Dalbank, the Chinese Eastern Railway, the offices of the Soviet Military Attaché and other buildings inside the premises of the Soviet Embassy, and to confiscate their archives and weapons and arrest a number of Communists, both Russian and Chinese.

As afterwards became known, a great deal of propaganda material was found, and a number of documents from the office of the Military Attaché proved beyond all question the complicity of the Soviet Government in the anti-foreign agitation and its continuous interference in China's civil wars.

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