WAR IN CHINA: Victories & Napoleon

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

This week: 614,725

Week ago: 613,000

Month ago: 605,000

Year ago: 500,000

To Chinese the best war news in a long time was the absence for several days last week of Japanese announcements of fresh advances. Tucked away in Tokyo communiqués there were even statements that sizable Japanese forces in captured North China territory among the mountains of Shansi had been fed with biscuits dropped by Japanese bombers.

In other words, the harassing Chinese guerrilla tactics recently launched (TIME, Oct. 11) on a large scale, had evidently cut some Japanese supply lines. The Chinese guerrillas have to keep on the move, waging hectic hit-and-run warfare, and messages from their commanders last week were reaching Nanking, the Chinese Capital, as much as a fortnight late. As the chief hit-and-run generals, emerged “Red Napoleon” Chu Teh and “100 Victories” Wei Li-huang. They were harassing the Japanese shoulder to shoulder last week, although four years ago the Chinese Government was offering $100,000 for the “Red Napoleon” alive or $80,000 for him dead; and the “100 Victories” (more or less) which earned General Wei his soubriquet were won in skirmishes aimed to exterminate the Chinese communists of General Chu.

Typical of belated but glorious news received by Chinese Premier & Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek at Nanking last week was this telegram from Red Napoleon Chu: “First the left flank of our army began an attack against Ningwu, which was held by the Japanese and is situated 30 miles west of the important Great Wall pass of Yenmenkwan. After besieging the city for four days we finally recaptured it, taking 2,000 Japanese prisoners.

“On October 7, we attacked the cities of Taiyueh, Yulintsun and Mayi, the last two of which were recaptured. We also destroyed all highways, bridges and telegraph and telephone lines in the vicinity of Taiyueh and outside the city killed over 100 Japanese and destroyed a dozen armored cars.

“On October 12 we again defeated Japanese reinforcements coming to relieve Taiyueh and killed 200 and burned eighteen of their sixty armored cars.”

Meanwhile United Press Correspondent Jack Belden managed to reach the field headquarters of “100 Victories” Wei somewhere in Shansi—his messages via the headquarters radio not saying where. “General Wei is as cold as a Shansi winter wind,” radioed Mr. Belden. “He came from behind a sea of maps to grant the curtest interview I have ever had.

” ‘I don’t consider the withdrawals from Tsinan and down the Peiping-Hankow railroad large defeats’ he said. ‘We have just begun to fight.’ [Then] he went back to his maps.”

Mr. Belden noted that “100 Victories” Wei seemed to have some heavy artillery and plenty of small, anti-tank guns. Previous lack of these accounted for many Chinese defeats in the North, for Japanese light tanks have advanced almost with impunity.

This week the Japanese advance was resumed, “after extremely heavy fighting” according to Tokyo communiqués, but it was evident that Chinese troops in mountain areas so inaccessible that even their own Government has not known exactly how the war was going, have been making brave, effective resistance on a scale Chinese have not before equalled in the North.

Weaker than “Pressure?” In Shanghai last week U. S. Marine Sergeant John R. Coleman of Atkins, Ark. tore the clothes off a Chinese woman and thus saved her life, burned his hands, for a Japanese incendiary bomb had set her clothes afire. This made a news hero out of Sergeant Coleman while an estimated 5,000 Japanese and Chinese soldiers were killed during 70 hours of the heaviest fighting and bombing Shanghai has yet seen, all completely indecisive. Seemingly Tokyo was desperately bent on breaking through at Shanghai before the Nine-Power Treaty Conference presently meets in Brussels, and Nanking was just as desperately resolved that the Japanese shall not pass. Anxiously, highest Japanese military and naval commanders made secret personal inspections of the Shanghai fronts last week, trying to figure out how the Chinese have managed to hold out for exactly two whole months.

Chinese statesmen, intensely hopeful that President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Chamberlain intend the Brussels Conference to take real action against Japan, scanned bitterly words uttered by Mr. Chamberlain last week to the Commons in London: “It is a mistake altogether to go into this [Brussels] Conference talking about economic sanctions, pressure and force. We are there to make peace. We are not there to extend the conflict.”

If this meant that the British Prime Minister thinks sanctions, pressure and force against Japan would only “extend the conflict,” Chinese feared Mr. Chamberlain must have in mind using not stronger methods—since there are none stronger—but weaker ones, weaker even than “pressure.” They were inclined to credit growing rumors in the United Kingdom that the sympathies of most members of His Majesty’s Government are considerably more with Japan, Italy, Germany than with China, Leftist Spain, Russia.