Army & Navy - MORALE: Afternoon in Peiping

From China came a steady trickle of evidence that the conduct of U.S. servicemen is not much better there than it has been in Europe (TIME, Nov. 19). TIME Correspondent William Gray reported last week:

Smashing up nightclubs is a fairly common occurrence in Shanghai. There are plenty of incidents: four sailors walking into a Hong Kong shop, grabbing seven bottles of vodka and walking out; a G.I. slugging a pedicab driver because he rang his bell behind him; G.I.s driving their Army vehicle through the window of a bar because they thought they had been gypped.

One afternoon in Peiping:

The sailor was drunk. He held a half-empty bottle of whiskey as he swooped into a silk and fur shop. The half-dozen Chinese clerks inside looked apprehensively at each other.

Drunk as he was, the sailor knew what he wanted. "Where's your silk scarves?" A Chinese clerk got some out. The sailor pawed through them and took another drink. Then he wobbled across the room to the fur counter, with clumsy furtiveness stuffed a piece of fur under his heavy pea jacket and moved back to the silk.

The fur dropped from under his coat to the floor. A clerk snatched it up while another clerk began frantically clearing the counter.

The sailor stuck his hand in his pocket, pointing the bulge at another clerk. "Come over here," he snarled. "You don't think I'll shoot ya, huh?"

The clerk tried to smile. Pushing the bulge to a sharper point, the sailor again ordered: "C'mere." The clerk bolted out the front door.

"Americans are our friends," pleaded the Chinese manager. "I will make you a cup of tea."

"Don't give me that bull —," growled the sailor. "Have a drink," and he went back to his bottle.

Another American in the shop finally coaxed the sailor out by offering to take his picture. There was a ricksha outside and the drunken sailor climbed in, posing. "The guys on East 136th Street'11 get a kick out of seeing this," he said. A crowd of Chinese watched while his ricksha rolled away.

The clerk who had fled reappeared and went pensively back into the shop.

Correspondents also reported:

U.S. soldiers & sailors are bored, homesick, frustrated by language difficulties. They resent the fact that many Chinese have marked them as fall guys. Pickpockets and petty thieves prey on them. More ostensibly respectable Chinese gyp them openly. When Navymen began swarming ashore at Shanghai, the swank Park Hotel jacked its liquor prices 50%. Nightclub proprietors—Chinese and foreign—vie with each other in trying to take U.S. servicemen for all they can get. Ricksha drivers double and treble their fares. Waiters sneer at anything less than four times the conventional tip.