WAR IN CHINA: Again Liberty Bonds

Of China’s 4,480,992 square miles, Japanese forces held:

This week: 613,000 Week ago: 600,000 Month ago: 540,000 Year ago: 500,000

By last week an atmosphere of almost World War tenseness, anguish and sacrifice was spreading through China and Japan. The “Liberty Loan’^of $150,000,000 asked by the Nanking Government was well on its way over the top last week as the first official Chinese announcement said, $71.250,000 had already been subscribed. Tokyo was warming up for “Nationalspirit Mobilization Week” during which radio appeals and mass meetings all over Japan must soon sell $57,660,000 worth of 3½% “China Incident Bonds” redeemable in eleven years.

Japanese editors last week taunted that wealthy Chinese have been slack in buying Liberty Bonds, caused tortoise-spectacled Chinese Loan Chairman T. V. Soong to retort: “The sale of our bonds is in pleasing contrast to the situation in Japan where ‘China Incident’ Bonds are being forced down the throats of bankers whose portfolios are already overladen with Government bonds, thus creating a ‘Red Ink Bonds Problem’ and accelerating the collapse of Japan’s economic currency structure.” He added that in Shanghai alone $3,000,000 had been subscribed by wealthy Chinese in blocs of $15,000 and up. The fact that Mr. Soong named none of these big subscribers brought fresh Japanese taunts and he presently revealed himself as maintaining at his own expense two large hospitals for Chinese wounded and establishing a third. “No mention has been made of this publicly before in the face of the gallantry of our soldiers in giving life and limb for their country,” said Mr. Soong, brother-in-law of Chinese Premier and Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek. “To try to snatch credit from our soldiers would be indecent.”

Japanese wounded, brought all the way home from China, were commencing to arrive in trainloads at Tokyo. Drawn window blinds concealed the most appalling cases, shattered men carried off as inert as logs wrapped in bandages. Other Japanese wounded, able to hobble about, returned home in white kimonos. All week in Tokyo wounded came in on one platform and fresh troops bound for China entrained on the next platform, entered it through a triumphal arch inscribed “CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR SOLDIERS LEAVING FOR THE FRONT!”

Chinese women meanwhile sacrificed for Liberty their wedding rings and gold trinkets at the behest of their Premier’s able wife, Radiorating Mme Chiang Kaishek. To the many earmarks, minute or mighty, of this Great War last week Shanghai actuaries added finally a careful estimate that property damage there already exceeds $750,000,000. This is three times greater than the total of losses at Shanghai caused by Japan’s attack there in 1932.

“50,000 Japanese Trapped,” Japan’s first great objective is to seize all Chinese territory north of the Yellow River, and the crumpling of Chinese resistance there last fortnight was followed last week by drastic changes in the Chinese command, dictated by Generalissimo Chiang from Nanking.

The famed “Model Governor” of Shansi Province, General Yen Hsi-shan officially abdicated his command to General Huang

Shao-hsiung from Nanking, and was rumored devoting all his time to frantic efforts to move $10,000,000 in treasure, his personal fortune, away from imminent capture by advancing Japanese troops. Meanwhile to Generalissimo Chiang there rushed from south China able General Li Tsung-ien, longtime War Lord partner of able Pai Tsung-hsi (TIME, Sept. 6). Eight years ago these two rebelled against Chiang because he was then unwilling to fight Japan as they thought China should. Last month General Pai became Chief of Staff to the Generalissimo. Last week after a final patching up of broken friendships in Nanking, General Li went north to command 50,000 troops he had sent ahead from the south to try to stop the Japanese in Shantung. Shantung’s Governor, famed General Han Fu-chu whom Japanese have been trying to win over by bribes, thus had to make up his mind last week, clarioned: “I urge all under my command to vow resistance to Japan until we die!”

All this meant that brutally invaded China was rallying strongly last week, apparently united more closely than ever. Renewed confidence at Nanking brought enthusiastic Chinese press stories, to be accepted with reserve, which boasted that erstwhile Chinese Communist troops had recaptured in Shansi the Yenman Pass and the Pingshing Pass and “trapped 50,000 Japanese.” Apparently the Chinese troops were staging effective guerrilla raids in territory which nominally has been “conquered” by Japan, and such harassing tactics may prove the best against an invader who last week had advanced so far that the various lines of military supply Japan must keep open had reached a combined length of over 1,000 miles.

Japanese, pursuing their second objective of cutting off China from receiving Soviet supplies via Outer and Inner Mongolia, captured last week Kweisui, the capital of Suiyuan. This province is the third in Inner Mongolia, Japan having taken Jehol in 1933 and northern Chahar in 1935, but although Suiyuan’s capital fell last week the entire province was by no means conquered, the Soviet link not cut.

North China’s ancient capital Peking, which has been called Peiping for the past nine years by decree of Premier Chiang, is now administered by Chinese officials under orders of its Japanese conquerors. Last week amid local rejoicing the city resumed its name of Peking, meaning proudly “Northern Capital,” whereas the insipid name of Peiping has meant “Northern Peace.”

Long Ears Equal Wisdom? Second only to the paradox that Japanese should restore Peking’s name last week is the paradox that the Japanese military Com-mander-in-Chief at Shanghai, long-eared General Iwane Matsui, was an intimate friend and cash contributor to the fortunes of Dr. Sun Yatsen, the late Father of the Chinese Revolution who is revered as a Saint at Nanking, the Chinese Capital. Long ears, characteristic of all Japanese statues of the divine Buddha, are considered to indicate wisdom in the Orient. Last week the Shanghai correspondents of the New York and the London Times were driven to the secret headquarters of General Matsui. They found muddy water an inch deep in the hall of the Commander-in-Chief’s commandeered headquarters, paper pasted over the broken panes of his windows, water leaking through the roof and pattering loudly into tin pans. It was impossible to talk in comfort until deft Japanese orderlies had placed towels in the bottoms of the tin pans to deaden the noise. Then long-eared General Matsui fell to reminiscing about what a help he was to Dr. Sun Yat-sen and in general how Japan has helped eminent Chinese—indeed Chinese Premier and Generalissimo Chiang received his military education as a cadet in Tokyo.

“I have devoted the last 30 years of my life to the cause of co-operation between Japan and China,” said General Matsui, 60. “A Chinese maxim says that ‘When you are convinced of righteousness, go straight forward, even against millions of opponents.’ This exactly describes our present convictions. . . . Even now my heart is full of zeal to realize the salvation of the 400,000,000 people of China rather than to chastise her.”

“Like Hell” Three days later Japanese invaders and Chinese defenders of the various Shanghai areas and environs subjected them to the most terrific chastisement of the War. The offensive recently prepared by Chinese land forces (TIME, Oct. 18) was launched in ghastly sword-to-bayonet, hand-to-throat scrimmages which broke Japanese barriers erected in captured sectors of the Chapei slums, carried Chinese screaming with triumph into mastery of numerous crooked alleyways and shattered streets. Japanese and Chinese machine gunners in some cases kept dueling at each other from behind splintered walls only a few yards apart. Chinese bombing raiders came over at 6 p.m., 6:07, 6:30, and 6:50. Japanese warships in the river, Japanese land batteries and Chinese artillery—all opened up in bedlam, streaking the evening sky with tracer bullets. Japanese aircraft, zooming up from a field the Chinese were bombing, got busy in mad efforts to save themselves and retaliate with as much damage to Chinese as possible, proceeded to fly over the neutral foreigners in the International Settlement with full cargoes of bombs, released these at speed over the Settlement, aimed them, of course, to fall in a slanting trajectory on Chinese positions a few yards outside.

As dozens of great fires broke out and Chinese and Japanese shells not aimed at the Settlement screamed over it. there were gruesome accidents. The Chinese motorman of a Shanghai trolley car, seeing that a big bomb was going to land in the street ahead of it, applied his brakes and yelled warnings to his 14 passengers, clanged his bell. An instant later the bomb exploded 20 feet in front of the trolley, blew it to blazes, killing the motorman, all his passengers and some people standing in the street, while other pedestrians who miraculously escaped found their clothes soaked by the spurts and splashes of victims’ blood. Veteran U. S. Marines of the Settlement guard at once took efficient charge of this horrible shambles, and the opinion was heard: “I guess them Japanese must have let go that bomb in a cross wind that spoiled their aim.”

A shell, bursting by accident at the intersection of Peking and Szechuan Roads killed one Chinese, tore a limb from each of four. Together one bomb and one shell killed a total of 80 Chinese and on the river splinters of shrapnel fell like rain on the decks of Japanese, U. S. and other warships. Star shells shrieked up as the night deepened, searchlights stabbed and crisscrossed the blackness, feeling for bombers, and a young U. S. officer who had been out risking his neck to see what the bloody clinches of War are like, came back with the news:

“They are fighting like Hell.”

Military experts 24 hours later, after the fighting had guttered out, admitted that this has been International Shanghai’s most terrible taste of war, although negligible in military results. Eight hundred Shanghai residents who had fled to Hong Kong during the past two months took ship there last week to sail back to Shanghai, figured they would rather risk Death and know the worst than remain stretched on the wrack of worrying about their Shanghai property.

“Peaceable Means” & Warlike.By a recent resolution of the Assembly of the League of Nations (TIME, Oct. 18), it was recommended that signatories of the Nine-Power Treaty signed at Washington in 1922, and pledging respect for the territorial integrity of China and the Open Door meet again soon. As any such meeting is infuriating to Japanese minds, President Roosevelt has not wished to act as host in Washington, “and Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain has felt the same about London. Last week King Leopold III of the Belgians, Statesman Sovereign of the smallest Nine-Power Treaty signatory, agreed readily “at the request of the British Government and with the approval of the Government of the United States,” to be host in Brussels on Oct. 30 and to have the Belgian Government send out the invitations, not only to signatories of the Treaty but also to non-signatories such as Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia who have vital stakes in the Far East. His Majesty’s Government in the Kingdom of the Belgians announced that the Brussels Conference will “examine the situation in the Far East and study peaceable means of hastening the end of the regrettable conflict which prevails there.”

In Washington, Secretary of State Cordell Hull, formally accepting the invitation for the U. S., announced that the sole U. S. delegate to the Brussels Conference would be Ambassador-at-Large Norman Davis. Accompanied by two State Department advisers, a secretary and a press officer, Delegate Davis was to sail this week.

Whether or not this proves to be a conference of wrist-slappers, Shanghai dispatches announced this week that at least two of the conference nations, the French Republic and the Soviet Union, are at length helping China to give Japan black eyes by supplying bombing planes flown to Nanking from Soviet Siberia and from French Indo-China. These ships this week were bombing Japanese positions not only at Shanghai but in North China, and every patriotic Chinese itched for the day when they will actually dare to fly over and for the first time in history bomb Japanese towns and cities.