The dove of peace is never more than a transient visitor in several famous parts of the world, but in the last decade there has been no country quite as inhospitable as China. Barely a year had elapsed since that patient bird spread its wings over what was hoped to be a united nation under the banking regime. But last week the news dispatches carried the old story--the dragons of war have broken loose again and frightened the timid creature back to its Geneva sanctuary. The details are not unusual. A defeated general raises an army; a force sent to suppress him revolts; rebellion flares up in another place and before long civil war is raging once more.

One item in the dispatches is revealing in its matter-of-factness. "Both sides are looting and making heavy extortions from the populace." There have probably been few cases in history in which war has been so much at the expense of the inhabitants as in the struggles in modern China, and the stream of refugees and emigrants to the distant but more tranquil Manchuria will probably be greater than ever this year. There the international competition is still present to add to the complication, as is shown by rumors of Russian generals or Japanese money backing one or the other faction. Out of China should come something of great moment to world history before long, but to contemporary eyes it is still a witches' cauldron ever threatening to boll over.