WAR IN CHINA: Belated Push

In the gaudy blue & gold dress uniform of a Field Marshal, the owl-eyed Son of Heaven, Hirohito, Emperor of Japan last week addressed his parliament from the Throne. Assembled for an emergency session, the legislators were expected to vote an additional $592,000,000 for a war that has already cost Japan $145,000,000. Said the Emperor:

“Japan is always solicitous to obtain peace in East Asia by means of mutual co-operation and mutual prosperity with China. It is to be regretted that China has failed to understand the true intentions of Japan. China has indulged in provocations which precipitated the present incident. Japan’s soldiers now are displaying devotion to their country by overcoming all difficulties. These operations are intended only to persuade China to reconsider her course and thereby re-establish the peace of East Asia. It is to be hoped that all people of Japan, in view of the situation, will unite in unswerving devotion in order to obtain this object.”

From Japanese headquarters in Peiping last week it was admitted that, in the course of Japan’s persuasion of China to go under her yoke, General Shigeo Fujii, long a veteran of Japanese action in China and credited with the founding of the Japanese controlled Manchukuoan Army, had been murdered by his own men, mutinying to fight against Japan. Killed by other Manchukuoan mutineers was the Japanese-controlled General Liu Kwei-tang. Later in the week came word that the entire Second Division of the Manchukuoan Army led by its Commander Yin Pao-san, and Chief of Staff Chu Chen-jua, had gone over to the Chinese side. Many other Manchukuoans did not bother to declare for the Nanking Government, but reverted to simple banditry.

Elsewhere in the north there was more trouble. Japanese reinforcements pouring all week long through Peiping, put the total Japanese force in North China under Lieut. General Kiyoshi Kazuki at well over 90,000 men. Through driving rain and mud hip-high to the short-legged Japanese, lines were pushed straight through to Kalgan in Chahar Province, giving Japan final control of the vitally important Nan-kow Pass and Peiping-Kalgan railroad, the line that Japan must have if she is to control North China (or ever attempt to attack Russia through southern Siberia).

But the remnant of the 5,000 Chinese de fenders of Nankow Pass had fled south west to Shansi Province, joined a formi dable, well-equipped Chinese army there.

South of Peiping two roughly parallel railroads run, one to central Hankow the other to Pukow and Nanking. Because divisions of Chiang Kai-shek’s highly mechanized, German-trained personal army were driving north six weeks ago, threatening to cut the Japanese line between Peiping and the sea, the Japanese Navy was ordered to stage what is technically known as a diversion at Shanghai.

The Shanghai diversion halted the Chinese advance at Paoting on one railroad, at Machang on the other, but got the Japanese Navy in such hot water that Japanese divisions had to be sent to its rescue, divisions badly needed in the real theatre of war, North China. The Chinese divisions were still on the Peiping-Hankow and Tientsin-Pukow railroads last week, so General Kazuki, now reinforced, moved south against them. Whereupon Japanese soldiers promptly found themselves out of the mud but in the water. Torrential rains and dikes blasted by Chinese flooded miles of countryside, waist deep. Japanese planes could bomb Machang almost at will, but Japanese soldiers couldn’t get near it.

Though all military observers realized that North China was the real theatre of war, foreign correspondents at Shanghai, seeing a major modern battle exploding directly in front of their typewriters, showed an understandable lack of perspective, wrote about little but the great battle of Shanghai.

At the week’s start, after 54 days of fighting, the estimated 200,000 Chinese troops defending Shanghai held every ad vantage, drove Japanese troops back at several points, at one time actually forced a fleet of eight Japanese transports to seek safety farther down the river. Day after day, Japan’s long-heralded Big Push was postponed, finally got under way at week’s end, with small success. Although the Japanese struck on a wide front, apparently with all the force they could muster by air, from the water and on land, the Chinese held firm, lost 500 men to the enemy’s 1,000 on the first day of the Big Push.

Loudly claiming sanctuary as members of Shanghai’s International Settlement, Japanese transports last week continued to unload troops, horses, shells, medicine and munitions at the docks of the International Settlement, where Chinese are pledged to do no fighting. French and British finally succeeded in closing their section of the Settlement to passage of Japanese troops or the madly careening trucks that caused almost as much damage as shell fire. U. S. Admiral Harry Yarnell, British Admiral Sir Charles Little, backed by the French naval commander, devised joint proposals which they sent to their Consuls General who in turn presented them to Shanghai’s Chinese Mayor, toothy O. K. (for nothing) Yui and Japanese Admiral Kiyoshi Hasegawa. For the protection of foreigners in the International Settlement, one demanded that all Japanese warships drop downstream below the China Merchants Lower Wharf, that Chinese soldiers retire simultaneously south of Yangtsepoo Creek. No hint of what action Britain and the U. S. might take was added. Polite Mayor Yui said that he would forward the note to Nanking. Admiral Hasegawa said nothing. Few days later the Tokyo Government sent to London a belated reply to their note demanding fullest apology for the shooting two weeks ago of British Ambassador to China Sir Hughe Montgomery Knatchbull-Hugesson (TIME, Sept. 6). Reports from London indicated that the reply was not worth waiting for: it contained no formal apology, was patently a Japanese attempt to gain time. The British Cabinet was thought likely to send another ”stiff note.”

Japan’s naval blockade spread last week to include all 2,150 miles of the China coast, omitting British Hong Kong, Portuguese Macao, and internationally crucial Tsingtao, though by week’s end no important ship had yet been stopped or sunk.

As the week advanced the Japanese felt more and more convinced that the Chinese-Soviet non-intervention treaty signed fortnight ago contained a great deal more than appeared on the surface. From Russian Turkestan to Inner Mongolia (with direct connection to Moscow) a Soviet air line was reported suddenly established last week. Among the first passengers is expected none other than sallow Young Marshal Chang Hsueh-liang, whose “kidnapping” of Chiang Kai-shek was one of the preliminary steps to last week’s war. Naming places, Japan charged that 72 of 210 Russian military planes had been delivered to Nationalist China through Inner Mongolia last week, hinted that Russian aviators might come to serve them.

All this caused considerable amusement to veteran foreign correspondents in China. Believing that Chiang Kai-shek’s long war with Chinese Communists showed a sincere hatred of Communism everywhere, Germany long ago lent him a corps of military advisers. Five generals, headed by General Baron Alexander Ernst von Falkenhausen, World War veteran, one-time German military attache at Tokyo, were in China last week. Distinctly possible was it that General von Falkenhausen may soon find himself sitting side by side at a staff conference with a group of Red Army Communists.