EVENING SPIDERS

IN CHINA

If we are to believe the most recent communiqué from Beijing, General Feng-Yu-Siang has just effortlessly risen to the supreme command, previously held by General Ou-Pei-Fou.

As was to be expected, the first act of authority of the newly promoted was to split the ear of his unfortunate rival. This is a torture that is not exclusively Chinese and of which we have seen, in the past, many examples on our Western front. The originality of the celestial methods lies in the way in which the operation is carried out.
In our country, the generals who had ceased to please the great leader received the order to fall back on Limoges, a paltry combat post where they had to tirelessly exercise their strategic talents on an army of dominoes lined up in battle formation in the back room of the Café du Commerce. It was brutal.
In the Middle Kingdom, one acts with more elegance. Using all the circumlocutions required by Asian politeness, General Feng-Yu-Siang humbly begs his glorious colleague General Ou-Pei-Fou, to go and apply his inestimable faculties to the "development of Lake Kokonor", which lake is a sort of salt marsh located in the north of Tibet, and at an altitude of three thousand meters.

Which proves that if, in all countries, vengeance is the dish of the gods, the gods of war, in China, know how to season it with a touch of irony.

Bernard GERVAISE.