CHINA-JAPAN: Hero Ma

China has lost every war she has tried to fight since the 18th Century. But Chinese General Ma Chan-shan, who personally declared war on Japan fortnight ago (TIME, Nov. 16), still stuck to his guns and his trenches last week, became a towering hero to the Chinese people. From Newark, N. J. for example the Chinese Merchants’ Association cabled $2,000 to Hero Ma. To report the heroic struggles of General Ma, star correspondents rushed by plane and train towards his remote war base, Tsitsihar.

Battles. Japanese last week dominated every capital of Manchurian provinces except Tsitsihar. Conflict raged in a series of short battles and hot skirmishes up & down the Nonni River and the roughly parallel Taonan-Angangki Railway. Facing Tsitsihar, the Japanese field commander, Major General Hasebe, had the sluggish river on his left, the railway on his right. Wide swamplands made the Japanese left wing impregnable against Chinese attack. But against the exposed Japanese right wing General Ma flung his cavalry in charge after Chinese charge. On the centre of the battle front both armies were entrenched, fought each other with every modern weapon except poison gas.

General Ma, despite his frontal resistance and spirited efforts to turn the Japanese right flank, was forced slowly back upon Tsitsihar. Miles behind the Japanese lines during the week and safe from Chinese capture was the famed Nonni River Bridge, almost captured by General Ma in his first assaults. Under grim Japanese guard and directed by Japanese engineers, docile Chinese coolies completed repairs to the dynamited bridge, made possible the further advance of chuffing Japanese armored trains.

Red Aid? First white correspondent to reach General Ma was small, dark, alert Fred Kuh (pronounced “coo”) who had dashed 6,000 mi. overland from Berlin where he is Bureau manager for United Press. In crossing the entire breadth of Russia, passing the Soviet frontier, coming on to Tsitsihar, experienced Correspondent Kuh saw no evidence of Red Army troop movements or war preparation of any kind by the Soviet Union.

While Japanese papers saw Red, while the Japanese General Staff in Manchuria “proved” to correspondents by showing them dead Russians in Chinese uniforms that Moscow was aiding Ma, Correspondent Kuh asked the Japanese Consul at Tsitsihar (who was just leaving for Harbin) his opinion. Flatly the Consul said that Moscow was not aiding Ma.

Kuh & Ma. Short, slender and serene is Hero Ma. He looks almost exactly like the late, great Manchurian War Lord Chang Tso-lin under whom he learned to fight. Like Marshal Chang’s mustache, the mustache of General Ma is thin, black and drooping. Like Chang’s head. Ma’s head is closely shaven, glistens. As small Marshal Chang used to be small General Ma is the terror of a General Staff composed exclusively of tall, strapping, exceedingly respectful Chinese officers. They bent their large bodies over staff maps last week while General Ma in silken house slippers but wearing a fur-collared military great coat affably received Correspondent Kuh.

Seated beside the General on a sofa, Guest Kuh surveyed four rubber plants in pots, four cuspidors, a large German clock, sumptuous Persian rugs, rich curtains, and a table on which tea was sumptuously laid in a silver service, complete with biscuits, fruit, cakes and a bucket of cracked ice surrounding French champagne.

“I am convinced that we face a great offensive immediately,” said General Ma, stirring his tea. “We have lost more than 400 killed and 300 wounded since Nov. 5 and now the Japanese have handed an ultimatum to me. I know we are not strong enough to fight. But we must hold our own,” cried Hero Ma with a fine flourish, “until Death!”

Uncorking the champagne, Host Ma proposed and sipped “a toast to America!” and “a toast to China!”

“Rumors that Moscow is helping me,” he continued, “must be due to the fact that while I was Chief of Police of the Town of Sakhalin-Ula I used to dine twice a year with the Soviet officials. I can swear that no foreigners have given or are giving me guns, munitions, supplies or money! I want the League of Nations to fulfill its duty. I want it to force the Japanese to withdraw from Northern Manchuria. If I am forced to abandon Tsitsihar I intend to retire into the back country.”