a bold and paradoxical speculator

War, real but undeclared, broke out at Shanghai on January 28, 1932. Two days later the National government which Chiang Kai-shek had established five years before at Nanking was moved to Loyang, far from the menace of Japanese men-of-war on the Yangtse.

He was so gifted, so lovable, but so great an extremist, they said; he overdrove himself always one way or another; and when he married the wrong woman, the mistake tortured him more than it might have done other men. “He’s devil-ridden with that temperament of his,” Bricksham said once to his wife.

[…]Th’ Angelic Guards aſcended, mute and ſad[…]