MANCHURIA: Flight of Ting

All Manchuria was Japan’s last week. Harbin, last important city not occupied by Japanese troops, fell before the fierce frost-bitten fighters of General Jiro Ta-mon. Winter was Harbin’s best defender. For seven days the fur-hatted Japanese columns struggled north over a frozen desolate country in a temperature of 30° below zero. Finally they closed in on the city from the west and south.

Harbin is in the Russian sphere of influence in Manchuria. It is the headquarters of the Soviet-dominated Chinese Eastern Railroad. Some 25,000 Russians, Red and White, live there. But last week Russia made no overt move to protect the city whose defense was left to spry little General Ting Chao. General Ting Chao fought a 17-hour battle which Harbin’s shivering but fascinated inhabitants watched from their roofs. Possibly in an effort to embroil Russia. Ting Chao’s artillery was posted squarely in front of Russian offices of the C. E. R. But Russia was not embroiled. Ting Chao’s men finally broke under a withering fire from Japanese guns and airplanes while the General himself scuttled out of town, pursued by Japanese bombing planes. Harbin’s Japanese and White Russian inhabitants cheered lustily from the housetops. Within a few hours the occupation was complete. Japanese soldiers rushed about with great buckets of paste, posting notices that the city was under martial law, that its inhabitants were not to be molested.