RIVAL ARMIES IN CONFLICT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19607, 8 April 1927, Page 11

RIVAL ARMIES IN CONFLICT.

POWERS INCREASE FORCES. ANTI-FOREIGN BOYCOTT. The situation in China is growing more critical and chaotic. On the one hand the rival Chinese factions are again fighting, and on the other, the anti-foreign feeling is still markedly in evidence, although the Nationalists at Hankow have ordered the molestation of foreigners to cease. A general strike and a boycott against all foreign goods throughout the Yangtse Valley has begun, and the situation in that large region is rapidly becoming graver. At Hankow, the Japanese Admiral has sworn to prevent the Chinese trespassing in the Japanese concession. His forces have been hurriedly reinforced. Very heavy fighting between the Northern and the Southern armies is,in progress in the Anhwei province. At Nanking one of the Northern army's airmen dropped three bombs on the city and two on Pukow, a few miles to the north. Sir Austen Chamberlain, in a statement in the House of Commons, epoke of the impossibility of negotiating with the "Cantonese Government until its attitude toward the outrages at Nanking was known. He said the demands of the Powers might not be presented to the Nationalists for a day or two. The Japanese Government intends to send a fresh division, mostly cavalry, to its leased territory in Manchuria. It is also to strengthen the Japanese Embassy guard at Peking. An official account of the raid on a Soviet Embassy building at Peking shows that Chinese police forced an entry to the building and arrested 64 persons, including the Russian Charge d'Affaires. One Russian fiercely resisted his captors.