WAR IN CHINA: Things Upside Down

Of China’s 4,480,992 square miles, Japanese forces held: This week: 629,147 Week ago: 625,272 Month ago: 614,725 Year ago: 500,000

Through to the outside world last week came a vivid delayed cable recently sent by United Pressman Jack Belden, whose tough job was to cover the headlong Chinese flight from Taiyuan in the North: ”Scenes of horror marked the retreat of the Chinese, including former Communist corps. Screaming and running like maniacs, [were] soldiers whose skin had been burned from their hands and face, splashed by sulphur bombs.

“Speeding military trucks added to the confusion, running down soldiers and refugees who did not step aside in time. I saw a munitions truck explode near me and watched an armored car burn. At Fengyang a red-eyed, swollen-lipped figure hailed me. He was General Sun Lien-chung, Commander of the 26th Battalion. He stood disconsolately outside the gate of the city and remarked: ‘Things are upside down’.”

No correspondent last week succeeded in getting out any details of how greatly things were upside down in the politically more important area between Shanghai and Nanking. Chinese leaders have been talking for weeks about how their troops would be able to hold “for six months” against Japanese onslaughts “the Chinese Hindenburg Line,” Fushan-Soochow-Kashing. Its thousands of cement pillbox forts built upon hummocks in swampy terrain appeared most formidable, and bulwark of this Hindenburg Line was Soochow. Fortnight ago Chinese dignitaries appealed to foreigners to urge their governments to ask the Japanese to “spare highly cultured Soochow the horrors of bombing”—not that these Chinese doubted it could and would be defended. One day last week Japanese dropped some 700 bombs upon Soochow and not long afterward the official Japanese military spokesman at Shanghai gave out the following details, which Chinese officials did not deny:

“About midnight, from our front lines two scouting parties totaling seven or eight men each began a careful reconnoiter toward Soochow. They stealthily followed two large bodies of Chinese troops retreating toward the city. The Soochow gates stood wide open and the Chinese forces marched in and stacked their bayoneted rifles, whereupon fifteen Japanese followed.

“The Japanese proceeded to the city administration building and, when dawn broke, hoisted the Japanese flag, creating an extraordinary panic among the Chinese forces within the walls, all of whom fled by every available gate, some with and some without arms, and all without firing a shot. Those fifteen scouts, without a single man killed or wounded, remained in undisputed possession of Soochow for the next three hours, until other Japanese forces overtook them.”

Concluded the Japanese spokesman: “We consider the capture of the great city of Soochow in these circumstances to be the most unusual, tragi-comic exploit in the history of modern warfare.”

“See you in Sinkiang!” With his Hindenburg Line cracked, and with Japanese launching 200 armed flat boats on Lake Tai to shoot up and disorganize lakeside villages, Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek faced at his capital Nanking last week the virtual certainty that Japanese armies would soon sweep around south of Lake Tai, descend on him even if he could keep them from also sweeping around north of the lake and up the Yangtze River. Some 70 Japanese river gunboats were already pounding away at the Chinese boom of sunken junks which was flung across the Yangtze to block it weeks ago and defended by the Kianyin forts. The second line of Chinese defense ran last week from these forts to Wusih. Much of the Hindenburg Line had not yet given way when Generalissimo Chiang abruptly decided that his Government must evacuate Nanking, disperse itself all over the map of China.

That elderly and respected stooge, Mr. Lin Sen, the Chinese President, went aboard a warship which took him 1,000 miles up the Yangtze to Chungking. Foreign Minister Wang Chung-hui and Finance Minister Dr. H. H. Kung announced they were going to Hankow, with the War Ministry slated to establish itself just across the river at Wuchang. Obviously the main purpose of such announcements last week was to impress the world with a notion that whatever cities Japanese troops succeed in taking there will always be other cities containing part of the “Chinese Government.” Generalissimo Chiang, although still Premier, was reported hourly about to turn the Premiership over to his brother-in-law Dr. Kung.

About one-fifth of the Government personnel was moved or fled up the Yangtze River. The other four-fifths were given enough money to enable them to reach their homes in the provinces, urged to clear out of Nanking amid pathetic scenes. One high Chinese official, educated in the U. S. and a pillar of Chiang’s regime, wept constantly as he supervised the packing of his ministry’s more vital papers, the others being shoveled into enormous bonfires to prevent their falling into Japanese hands.

“What is the use?” he sobbed. “We have tried to pull our country up to the standard of others so that we could look at other nations with a feeling of equality and rightly demand mutual respect. Now it appears that all these efforts are coming to naught!”

Not thus downhearted was Mme Chiang, the Generalissimo’s spunky Christian wife, but she at last bitterly concluded that China is not going to be succored by any other government. Appealing over the heads of other governments to the world proletariat, desperate Mme Chiang last week affirmed: “The workers hold in their hands the power to compel observance of treaties, even if that power is relinquished by governments, and the resolve of Labor to uphold human rights is enshrined in the hearts of our people!”

A sense of humor, that leading Chinese characteristic, somewhat lightened the tragedy of flight from the Capital last week. Discharged but grinning Govern-ment clerks called to each other such jokes as “See you in Sinkiang!”—thus jocularly implying that the Government may ultimately flee 2,000 miles to remote Sinkiang (Chinese Turkestan).

Simultaneously with last week’s flight of clerks, officials and foreign diplomats up the Yangtze, Generalissimo Chiang brought down the river enormous levies of fresh Chinese troops, and these were flung against the advancing Japanese. General Pau Chung-hsi, chief of staff, advised that from a military point of view it would be best to make no attempt to defend Nanking. Generalissimo Chiang, who during the past seven years has spent millions embellishing his capital and mak-ing it the bright symbol of New China, unhesitatingly ordered Nanking’s defense at any cost. “One day we intend to erect upon ruins,” clarioned Chiang, “a new national structure which shall not perish!”

Japanese G. H. Q. this week seized the Chinese Government’s revenue cutters, fire boats and police launches in Shanghai waters, announced they had seized “in principle” all the Government’s rights in Shanghai and would prevent any part of the metropolis’ vast customs revenues from reaching Generalissimo Chiang. Chinese cable censorship at Shanghai was abolished, the Japanese not imposing this week censorship of their own. Expulsion of Chinese officials from Shanghai Govern-ment buildings was decreed. Chinese and foreigners alike were sternly warned by Japanese authorities to eschew anti-Jap-anese and pro-Communist activities of every sort.

Again, Imperial Headquarters. During the Chinese-Japanese War of 1894-95 and during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05, the Japanese Cabinet at Tokyo was virtually superseded and shoved out of control by setting up so-called Imperial Headquarters. Last week Imperial Headquarters was again set up within the hallowed, moat-encircled palace of Emperor Hirohito. According to an official communique, the War Minister and Navy Minister will occasionally invite the Premier to sit in with them and will keep the rest of the Cabinet posted as to what decisions are made by the potent militarists and revered elders of Imperial Headquarters.

Tokyo cowed Paris? The supplies of munitions moving across French Indo-China into Central China and thence to Generalissimo Chiang were halted on orders from Paris last week. Rumors that Japan had threatened to seize the Chinese island of Hainan and use it as a base to bomb the French-owned Indo-Chinese Yunnan Railway if the supplies were not cut off, were officially denied by the French and Japanese Governments—but within 24 hours President Henry Berenger of the French Senate Foreign Affairs Committee blurted a sensational statement that these rumors were substantially correct. “I am not betraying,” fibbed the Senator genially, “any diplomatic secret!”