WAR IN CHINA: Fall of Chochow

More than three months ago a sharp skirmish on Peiping’s suburban marble Marco Polo Bridge started the present war in China. By last week Japan had spent or appropriated $737,000,000, had landed 200,000 men in China—almost its entire standing army—and suffered untold thousands of casualties to prosecute that war. The war that was intended merely to nip off the Peiping section and possibly rich “model” Shansi Province, Shantung and Suiyuan, now covered China’s entire 2,150 mi. coastline (see col. 2),

In the north, most important theatre of war, Japan’s luck was good last week. General Count Juichi Terauchi, former Minister of War and now commander-in-chief in North China, was able to send a column of 60,000 men, mechanized, well-equipped, headed by cavalry, southwest from Peiping to cut the vitally important Peiping-Hankow railroad at Chochow.

Chinese staff officers were not too depressed by this defeat, however. For many weeks their strategy in the north had been deliberately to sacrifice the provincial troops that seemed to have neither proper artillery nor planes, and prepare for a real defense at Paoting, 85 mi. southwest of Peiping, where modern divisions of Chiang’s own army were being rushed. Japanese officers apparently expected to meet these well-equipped troops at any instant last week. Japanese scouting planes saw large numbers of anti-aircraft batteries, equipment that had been entirely unnecessary heretofore.

One night last week Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek did not go to bed at all in his headquarters at Nanking. What was keeping him awake was not only the north and Shanghai fronts, but the city of Haichow where there was as yet no fighting at all, a seaport south of the Shantung peninsula, connected with railroads at Peiping and Nanking at Suchow. Japanese warships were off Haichow harbor, but did this mean more than the blockade of Chinese ports? If Japan had enough men to spare to land a third army at Haichow she could cut off help from Nanking to the Chinese armies of the north.

With the Chinese withdrawal to their prepared positions behind Shanghai almost completed, the Shanghai front was quiet last week, though planes and big guns brought the International Settlement again under fire. There were fewer casualties than usual. After five weeks of bloody experience Chinese had finally learned that the streets are no place to be in during an air raid.

Keeping out of the streets was not enough for the harassed citizens of Nanking, 195 mi. up the Yangtze. Giving warning to all foreigners to quitthe city at once, Japan prepared for a mass bombing raid aimed at the total destruction of Nanking with a dress rehearsal in which the city was bombed mercilessly for two hours, with little retaliation from either Chinese anti-aircraft batteries or planes.