WAR IN CHINA: Anniversary

One year ago last week rifle bullets zinged over the heads of Japanese soldiers as they engaged in unauthorized night maneuvers near the white stone lions of the Marco Polo Bridge, ten miles south-west of Peking. The Japanese believed that Chinese soldiers stationed nearby had fired the shots and soon the two contingents were flat on their bellies, peppering each other. This was exactly the “incident” the Japanese Army had been waiting for as an excuse to extend its control south and west of the province of Jehol, occupied in 1933, to the remaining North China provinces of Chahay, Hopei, Suiyuan, Shansi and Shantung. Spurning Chinese offers to investigate the clash, Japanese commanders swung their big guns on Peking itself—and the war in China was on.

By last week, what the Japanese Army had envisaged as a cheap, comparatively easy three-month romp through the northern provinces had dragged out to a year of costly, still undeclared war, with the end nowhere in sight. Japan has overrun an area twice as large as France and Germany (see map, p. 15), has captured eight provincial capitals, and has extended her campaign through twelve provinces of North and Central China. All of China’s main ports, except Swatow, Foochow and Canton, which have been heavily bombed, are in Japanese hands. Shanghai, China’s commercial centre, was taken four months after the outbreak at Peking; Nanking, capital of China, fell one month later. Chinese officials fled Nanking, designated Chunking, far in the interior, as the seat of their Government and set up Hankow as their de facto capital. Last week, Japanese warships were within 135 miles of this Yangtze River city and most ob servers agreed that it would be in Japanese hands before autumn frosts.

But, balancing the credit side of the ledger of cities taken, provinces overrun, is the fact that Japanese control in the conquered territory is limited to rail-lines, roadways. Her battle front, supplied by overstretched, underprotected communi cation lines, is strung out three times as long as the Western Front during the World War. Behind these front lines Chinese guerrillas range with murderous freedom. In Shansi Province, “occupied” by Japanese for four months, 28 divisions of the Chinese Communist 8th Route Army move about organizing the peasants into a Communistic province within a province. At Peking, Chinese soldiers last week attacked the power house outside the city walls. In Shanghai, frequent firing is still heard as Chinese bands raid the outskirts. In its year in the field, the self-styled invincible Japanese Army met its first major defeat in modern military history as hordes of ill-equipped Chinese soldiers forced the invaders out of the now famed little town of Taierhchwang.

At home Japan finds the estimated $4,000,000-a-day cost of the war a severe strain on her finances. Main sections of the National Mobilization Act, placing all phases of the national life under government control, have had to be invoked.

China, although she has lost half a million of her best troops,* although she has lost battle after battle, is not yet on her knees. Despite the fact that Japan holds her ports and has taken over two-thirds of her railroads, supplies still pour in over the Canton-Hankow rail-line, by air from Russia to Sian and by road from French Indo-China and Burma. So far, China has been forced to dip only sparingly into the currency reserves she built up in expectation of the Japanese campaign. Most significant result of the war for China is that it has welded the nation into one body. Communists, potent provincial military leaders, once bitter foes of Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and of each other, now fight side by side.

Last week, both nations took stock of their twelvemonth gains and losses. There was no talk of ending the war, no mention of compromise.

For Japan, Premier Prince Fumimaro Konoye declared: “We are not fighting . . . with the Chinese people. Our conflict is with their leaders, civil and military, who have been assiduously inspiring the people with a hatred for the Japanese during the last ten years. We are firmly convinced that unless we uproot this underlying cause of wrong there can be no lasting peace in the Far East. . . . Japan is bound with an iron determination to settle the matter once and for all, no matter how much time may be needed.”

For China, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek declared: “China will not be conquered! . . . We are fighting for our existence. … It is to survive as a nation and to guarantee peace for our people and the generations of Chinese which are to come that we are struggling and will continue to struggle. . . . The Chinese will fight to the finish, even if there is only one inch of territory left and one Chinese living.”

Tokyo marked the anniversary with a minute of silence at high noon. Thousands of dry-eyed mothers, none brash enough to show tears which might indicate disapproval of the loss of Japanese lives in China, made solemn pilgrimages to the military shrines and prayed for their dead sons. Special, self-denying three-cent meals, consisting of a ball of rice the size of a grapefruit with a sour pickle imbedded in the centre, were eaten throughout the nation.

In Hankow, thousands gathered about “good offering” boxes, plumped in wedding rings, jewels and cash to pay for the war. Generalissimo and Mme Chiang opened contributions at one box with a gift of $18,000, part of which had been received by Mme Chiang for articles in foreign publications. In Shanghai, for eight months in Japanese hands, foolhardy Chinese patriots observed the anniversary by hurling homemade bombs at Japanese soldiers and at Chinese suspected of cooperating with the invaders. Two Japanese were assassinated, a dozen Chinese wounded by retaliatory gunfire.

*Germany’s military deaths in the World War numbered 1,773,700.