Foreign News: Behind the Lines

Black gloom settled last week over Chinese officials at Hankow when news came that the Soviet Union and Japan had signed a truce. While the fighting with the Red Army was at its hottest fortnight ago, Japanese aviators bombed Chinese cities only halfheartedly. Last week they redoubled their bombing zeal over the triplet Wuhan cities (Hanyang, Wuchang, Hankow), killed at least 1,000 people, damaged five U. S. mission properties. With the final battle for Hankow approaching, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek removed as much factory machinery as possible and shipped it upriver with Hankow’s 500,000 fleeing civilians.

U. S. newsmen in Hankow, accustomed to second-hand stories of conditions in Japanese-occupied areas of China, listened last week to a first-person account by tall, bristly-haired, up-&-coming 42-year-old Captain Evans Fordyce Carlson of the U. S. Marine Corps. Having served five years as attaché to the U. S. Embassy at Peking, Captain Carlson returned to Hankow after three and a half months’ “tour” as a military observer of the “conquered” provinces of Shansi, Hopei, Shantung and Suiyuan, where he traveled with organized Chinese guerrilla bands, including detachments of the Communist-trained Eighth Route Army, met Red Commander Chu Teh.

Going much of the time on foot, the U. S. officer traversed 2,000 miles with Chinese soldiers. On one trip in northern Honan he crossed the Japanese-patrolled Yellow River with a small guerrilla band. Estimating that at least 600,000 Chinese soldiers operated in the occupied areas, Captain Carlson declared the Japanese control only garrisoned towns, railway lines, main highways.

In southern Suiyuan, Captain Carlson visited famed Manchurian Leader General Ma Chan-shan, now carrying on guerrilla warfare near the border of Inner Mongolia. General Ma had supplemented his cavalry brigade with a formidable army of Mongol and Chinese deserters from forces organized by Japanese in their “puppet” states. Said Captain Carlson: “The Japanese have had no success in organizing Chinese armies to fight their battles for them. Already [General Ma] has 4,000 such converts in his ranks. While I was there a whole regiment of Manchukuoan soldiers arrived. They had murdered their ten Japanese officers and were still wearing uniforms and carrying arms supplied to them by the Japanese.”

Captain Carlson told how Chinese bands cross Japanese lines with ease, raid Japanese bases to get supplies; how Chinese guerrillas have set up well-functioning administrations which do everything from harrying the Japanese to keeping schools open; how they maintain their own small arsenals, form cooperatives to sell foodstuffs, have opened a bank which issues guerrilla money that the peasants gladly accept. At this bank Captain Carlson had no trouble in cashing a traveler’s check.

Meanwhile, able-bodied men are being constantly trained for the guerrilla armies, whose morale is high, and every Chinese has learned to sing war songs. As for Japan’s Chinese hirelings in “puppet” government jobs, Captain Carlson declared: “Chinese guerrillas are very charitable in their views toward the Chinese puppets, declaring that most of them are loyal Chinese at heart. They claim to be in constant communication with many of these Japanese hirelings.”