WAR IN CHINA: Shantung & Mah-Jongg

Exactly Hollywood’s idea of a Chinese War Lord, burly in figure, greasy but intelligent of face, and with a thin mustache is General Han Fu-chu. Japanese have $100,000,000 invested in the Chinese province of which he is Governor, famed Shantung which juts out into the Yellow Sea facing Japan like the chin of a placid prize-fighter all ready to be clouted. Last week Japanese bombing planes continued to hurl at Tsinan. Han’s capital, not death-dealing bombs but attractive offers encased in protective lengths of bamboo which rattled enticingly as they struck the Gobbles. Japanese businessmen with Shantung investments were busy in Tokyo begging and praying the Imperial Government not to go off half-cocked and invade Shantung but be just a little patient and win much more cheaply by means of bribes. Rumors that Shantung’s Han recently conferred in Tsinan with Japanese Lieut.-General Kenji Doihara, Tokyo’s ablest bribe artist in dealing with Chinese, were taken seriously enough at Nanking, China’s capital, for a government spokesman to angrily exclaim last week: “If Doihara came there he ought to have been locked up in jail!”

Chicago Daily News’s able China veteran A. T. Steele was last week the only correspondent to reach Shantung’s Han. “It was evident.” he cabled, “that General Han is a worried and unhappy War Lord—not the self-confident militarist this correspondent met on previous visits here.”

War Lord Han shouted: ”I will have no part in such treachery!” as taking bribes from Japan, but Mr. Steele knows his War Lords, chose to stress as the most important Shantung factor the arrival of so many Nanking troops in the province that it was doubtful last week whether Han remained sufficiently master of his province so that he could choose whether to sell out. The Nanking troops had not come fresh and forward into Shantung from Central China but were retreating into it last week from the North, badly disorganized by the Japanese punishment they have taken. At latest dispatches Nippon’s advancing war machine had crossed the border into Shantung, and War Lord Han was racked by a dilemma in which he stood to lose one of China’s richest plums, a flourishing province worth at least $20,000,000 yearly to even a Governor reputed “honest” like Han Fu-chu.

Flying Tactics. In Nanking with grandiose Oriental flourishes arrived Comrade Chin Pang-hsien, former Communist Chairman of the Chinese Soviet Government whose forces are now merged with those of the Chinese Government. “Our valiant Communist forces, now comprising the 8th Route Army of Nanking won two great battles last week in Shansi Province!” announced Chin. “They captured an entire Japanese battalion, including the commander, 60 truckloads of ammunition and one heavy, mounted gun with 2,000 projectiles. The Japanese lines crumbled under the swift, surprising blow ! More than 1,000 Japanese were killed and 10,000 Mongol and Japanese troops were disarmed. In the second battle our Communist troops penetrated clear to the rear of the Japanese lines by employing ‘flying tactics’ we used to use against Nanking.”

While Comrade Chin was hospitably received by Premier and Mme Chiang Kaishek, Nanking officials made no effort to substantiate his story, issued no denial of a terse Japanese communique which announced that the 8th Route Army, whose prowess Chin had boasted, was last week retreating south to Wutaishan before the Kwantung Army of Lieut.-General Seishiro Itagaki. The history of the present war records no instance in which Chinese ever captured “an entire Japanese division, including the commander.” Nonetheless Chinese resistance at Shanghai last week to heaviest Japanese bombing, bombardment and assault was an increasing wonder to the Far East, and the defenders’ morale ran exuberantly high. Crowed O. K. Yui. Mayor of Greater Shanghai: “When Japanese bombardment begins our soldiers just retire to their underground burrows like moles and stay there playing mah-jongg or shaking dice until the shelling ceases. Then they jump out again like ferrets and attack the oncoming Japanese infantry with rifles, swords and machine guns until the enemy retires.”

Japanese secretly landed 14-inch Krupp siege guns three weeks ago near Shanghai. have been working ever since to get these firmly set on concrete emplacements, finished the job last week and opened up with the heaviest projectiles ever hurled from land batteries in China. The concussion of the 14-inch German shells sounded and felt to startled Shanghai correspondents “greater than that of Japanese 500 Ib. bombs.”

“Moral victory.” Japan deliberately conceded to the League of Nations and other countries an empty moral victory when her government press spokesman shouted at Tokyo: “If any power wants to mediate, she must first acquire a full appreciation of our aims and aspiration! . . . We are determined to fight to the bitter end until China reconsiders her attitude and drastically alters her anti-Japanese policy. … If any power desires to associate itself with China it is entirely welcome to do so!”

Meanwhile a League Assembly motion was adopted which “solemnly condemns . . . aerial bombardment of open towns in China,” declaring that “no excuse can be made for such acts, which have aroused horror and indignation throughout the world.” From Geneva the Chicago Daily News’s Edgar Ansel Mowrer cabled: “Hideous and pitiful are the devices used to escape facing facts. . . . Absolutely nobody sees any way of helping China, except the League Hygienic Section, which is busy trying to organize a vast medical relief for Chinese victims.”

In London this week the Archbishop of Canterbury, inactive since he triumphantly worsted Edward VIII and bested George VI, set out to worst Japan by agreeing to preside at a monster meeting in which British friends of China will start a nationwide campaign to “Boycott Japan—Buy British!”