CHINA: Burma Roadster

Daniel G. Arnstein is a very rapid character. Everything he does is fast—from spending money in Manhattan nightclubs to trucking freight and cracking down on labor agitators in his huge Terminal System Inc. of New York City, which controls among other things some 4,500 New York taxis. Firm friends, bitter enemies, a tidy fortune and fame as No. 1 expert in motor transport—all these he attained in a hurry.

Last week, as he hustled to Clipper home from China, where Harry Hopkins had dispatched him (at $1 a year) to pep up lend-lease traffic on the fabled Burma Road, Speedster Arnstein had again done his stuff.

In six dizzy weeks of needling, wheedling, probing, recommending and arguing, the 50-year-old trouble shooter had succeeded handsomely in administering to Free China’s sole remaining commercial traffic vein a much-needed shot of adrenalin. Tonnage of U.S. and British war materials hauled through Burma to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek’s anxious people had more than doubled, promised to reach, then exceed the Road’s original estimated capacity of 30,000 tons a month.

Having negotiated — from Lashio, Burma, to Kunming, China — 726 agonized miles of the world’s most deadly, contorted, breath-taking and important highway, Arnstein told newshawks at Chungking: “It’s a good road, and its capacity, with efficient operation, is practically unlimited. It is possible that in the future Burma Road traffic will be limited only by the capacity of the port of Rangoon.” To Generalissimo Chiang these were heartening words. Cut off by the Japanese from her seacoast and from rail communications in Indo-China, Free China today finds herself as wholly dependent for materiel upon the Burma Road as is Britain upon the North Atlantic. And even had the burly Chinese truckers, who battle dust, rain, malarial mosquitoes, hangovers and enemy bombers on the ten-day grind to Kunming, managed to transport the “maximum” 30,000 tons per month, supplies would still have been woefully short of what Chiang needs for a first-class offensive.

From Arnstein, Chiang learned the pit falls of the Road: deplorable truck maintenance (sometimes 60% of all units are out of commission); inadequate roadside repair shops, and no gas depots; incompetent loading; unskilled, undisciplined grafting drivers (1,300 trucks have been wrecked since the Road was opened two and a half years ago); too many time-eating customs inspections en route; no authoritative, centralized control.

What infuriated Arnstein most of all is Burma’s 1% ad valorem tax on all merchandise in transit, a levy which would net the British possession’s Government $1,000,000 on U.S. shipments to China.

Observing caustically that “with Burma sitting on a powder keg herself, I see no reason why she should take money at the expense of a potential military ally,” at week’s end he had goaded Whitehall authorities into making “urgent” official representations to semi-autonomous Burma, suggesting immediate lifting of the tax.

To unravel the snarls in the lifeline, Arnstein has already made several important moves: appointment of U.S. Army Lieutenant James Wilson, a trucking veteran, to boss all operations; hiring of 31 American mechanics and dispatchers ; putting into service 4,500 new, heavy-duty American trucks, now arriving at the rate of 500 per week; resumption of the paving project with 10,000 tons of U.S. asphalt. Soon to appear are such other innovations as a police patrol, radio communications between control points.

But, while all this made Chiang Kai-shek beamish with joy, Dan Arnstein’s mission was scarcely a flawless triumph. Knowing little, caring nothing about protocol and the sanctity of face in the Orient, at Chungking receptions the hardhitting ex-cabby and his blunt, breezy manner had Occidental diplomats squirming in suspense. Once, when a secretary from the U.S. Embassy inquired fretfully why he had not called on Ambassador Clarence Gauss, only the Chinese guests seemed to enjoy his typical retort: “Why should I?” snapped Arnstein. “I don’t know him.”