Foreign News: Chu for Chiang

In Nanking a brief official announcement was made last week as important as anything that has come from China in a month: The Chinese Government and the Communist Army have been fighting for the last ten years. This is the official conclusion of the war.

At the same time it became known that the Chinese Communist Party, the Chinese Red Army and the Chinese Soviet were all technically abolished. Communist soldiers replaced the large red stars on their caps with small white stars, became, with no loss of time or commanders, the Eighth Route Army of the Nationalist Government. Nanking in return was pledged to “introduce democracy in China as soon as the war is over,” never to sign away any Chinese territory, and to fight Japan “to the end.”

Ostensibly, peace with China’s Communists was made by Nanking last winter, but actually it appeared that only last week’s announcement released the Nationalist divisions, who have been opposing the Communists for ten years, to fight Japan. It brings to China’s aid about 100,000 of the best trained, best equipped troops in Asia, and with them two of China’s ablest generals: bushy-browed Chu Teh and bob-haired Mao Tse-tung. The two of them have had a longtime partnership, General Chu being the military expert, General Mao the shrewd politician.

Between them, three years ago they performed one of the most extraordinary military feats of modern times: the great 2,000 mile retreat of a Communist army—cut off from supplies, living off the country, constantly harassed by the greatly superior forces of Chiang Kai-shek—from Fukien through western China to Shensi Province, where they set up another Communist state.

General Chu Teh looks like a peasant and takes his communism literally. His only weakness is a passion for basketball. At the Communist capital of Yenan the generalissimo could generally be found after hours at one or another of the city’s eight basketball courts, waiting humbly in line for some team captain to pick him for a team. Despite his enthusiasm, the generalissimo is a poor hand at dribbling and passing. Very often he must sit with the subs. To his followers last week General Chu sent this message:

“We have our chance at last to proceed eastward to kill the enemy. We support the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek and will fight hand in hand with all Nationalist armies. We wish to die in battle against the Japanese. We are sure we can recover the lost territory of Manchuria.” Before they can do anything of the sort, the Communist armies must move north-east some 350 miles to encounter the Japanese at Tatung in the northern edge of Shensi Province.

Japan’s lines in the north this week were spread over 250 miles from Tientsin through Peiping to Tatung with an indefinite number of Chinese irregulars sniping at their rear and two other Chinese armies threatening their flank in Hopeh province. Many reasons existed why Japan should wait for a Chinese attack, bend every energy to consolidate the ground she had already won, but strict military practice is sometimes incompatible with the Oriental necessity of saving Face. To save Face Japanese troops attacked in three directions at once, floundered through floods, bogged in the mud, calling up more and more reinforcements, the latest of which were mostly high-school boys. Eventually these reinforcements were able to capture the railroad city of Machang, besieged a fortnight, a victory that Japanese in Peiping advertised with enormous printed streamers hung from gas balloons. Face-saving added still another handicap to Japan’s high command. In a curious burst of confidence at Tientsin last week a Japanese commanding officer admitted that minor field commanders anxious to save Face were not reporting their true losses to their own headquarters, extending their lines without proper support, attempting frontal attacks on obviously superior positions. Base staffs had to trust largely to guesswork where it was most necessary to send munitions or men. Knowing this failing, last week Chinese troops west of Peiping were able to draw a column of 4,000 Japanese deep into the hills, wipe out the lot with enfilading machine gun fire.

Japan’s long awaited Big Push to encircle Shanghai from the mouth of the Yangtze, admittedly under way in full force a week ago, bogged down. Chinese lines had bent but never broken, and days of extravagant naval bombardment had far from wiped out the concrete pill boxes now sprouting like mushrooms about the city. Through the week in many sectors the Chinese were actually on the offensive, but at week’s end Chinese staff officers on the urgent advice of their German advisers, finally withdrew ten miles to prepared trenches inland, out of range of Japanese naval guns.

Towards the end of the week another enemy that doctors have long awaited rose to trouble both enemies: Cholera asiatica. In the newly captured town of Poashan by the Yangtze mouth, it was admitted that 20 Japanese soldiers had already died of this plague, at least 80 others were dying. Inside the Chinese lines no troops but hundreds of civilian refugees were suffering. It takes from two to five days after exposure for cholera to develop. On the second day after word of the epidemic came from the Japanese lines the first U. S. victim was reported from the International Settlement: H. A. Ferguson of Brooklyn, former U. S. Army private. Suffering only a light case, Civilian Ferguson was expected to recover.

Reverses in the trenches and plague did not end Japan’s troubles last week. A typhoon coursing northward from the South Pacific struck the Japanese islands, sank hundreds of small fishing boats, broke reservoirs, buried workers in landslides, flooded hundreds of houses in Osaka, Kochi, Takamatsu, Okayama.