CHINA: Crescendo

A million men surged around Suchow in the greatest battle in China’s history. A Communist victory would open the way to Nanking and probably seal the fate of the reeling Nationalist regime. A government victory might buy enough time for Chiang’s harried forces to recover from their recent string of shattering defeats—and for effective aid to arrive from the West.

Suchow, junction point of the south-north rail line from Nanking and the east-west Lunghai line to the coast, is a drab, unlovely city, protected by a rim of well-fortified, rocky hills. By week’s end Communist General Chen Yi’s mobile columns had swung around Suchow, cut all rail lines and brought the main airfield under artillery bombardment. Officers of Nationalist “Bandit Suppression Headquarters” hastily flew south to set up quarters nearer Nanking.

“What Shall We Do?” In the main battle, east of Suchow, government troops were forced to retreat. A mechanized group under General Chiu Ching-chuan (whose second in command is the Gimo’s younger son, Chiang Wei-kuo) broke up a Communist attempt at encirclement, and helped other Nationalist divisions to fight their way back to the west and south. The well-watered North Kiangsu plain seethed like an ant heap with soldiers on the move, as Government Field Commander General Tu Yu-ming desperately shifted his men over rutted roads and torn-up rail tracks to establish a new line with its back to the broad Yangtze. Past the military columns rattled slow trains of flatcars, jammed with refugees headed south for Nanking.

The refugees would have little to look forward to at their destination. TIME Correspondent Frederick Gruin cabled:

“Under the arching roof of Nanking’s new railroad station thousands of unwashed, penniless students from Honan and Shantung are camped on the dirty cement floor, waiting for a train to resettle them somewhere below the Yangtze. One plays a forlorn tune on a two-stringed Chinese violin. Others huddle beneath filthy grey quilts, while streams of noisy, heavy-laden travelers flow around them. The pump is their lavatory. Their guardian, the Education Ministry, can feed them only one rice meal daily—usually around midnight.”

Nanking’s mood fluctuated sharply with every report from the front. Early in the week hungry, hopeless mobs looted 50 rice shops whose owners refused to accept paper currency. From the police station just opposite one shop, a few white-helmeted guardians of law and order watched without interfering. “What shall we do?” asked one. “The government must not stand in the way of its hungry people.”

Another begged one of the rioters to let him have some looted rice.

The food riots were halted by the municipal government’s “discovery” of 1,300 tons of rice hoarded outside the South Gate (apparently by an unnamed government agency). This cache was distributed to rice shops and a rationing system instituted. At the same time new currency regulations temporarily stabilized the plummeting gold yuan and provided for the issuance of gold and silver coins.

Black Torrent. Like Nanking, Shanghai had calmed down slightly after widespread riots early in the week. Soothed by an emergency airlift of rice, and the promise of 8,000 tons more on the way from Hong Kong, Shanghailanders carried on much as usual. Coolies with shiny brass kitchenware hung from shoulder poles weaved through traffic banging their pans by way of advertisement. The usual crush of pedicabs surged down the street.

Though both Nanking and Shanghai were temporarily quiet, the situation in both remained explosive. Already violence flared at Shanghai’s exits. As soon as a train backed up to the North Station, a tidal wave of people ran down the platform and surged over the train, filling it up within ten seconds. Later arrivals covered the roofs of the coaches and clung to the locomotive. At the Yangtze wharves huge throngs collected every morning, waiting for a boat. When the gates opened for passengers to board, a black torrent gushed on to the ship. After the craft was dangerously overloaded, crewmen turned fire hoses on the masses still scrambling to climb aboard.

The fear was widespread that if the Communists won the battle of Suchow, raging crowds would spread destruction through Nanking and Shanghai. To bolster morale for the time being, a giant “Victory Parade” was ordered in Nanking. U.S. military experts on the spot did not believe that the government would have a victory to celebrate.