WAR IN CHINA: Honorable Peace?

One of the most potent men in China, one of the most trusted advisers of Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek, is “Organizer Chen Li-fu” as he likes to be called. In organizing the “New Life Movement,” the “Culture Control Movement” and other causes dear to the Generalissimo & Mme Chiang right down to the “Read-a-Book Movement,” no Chinese has won more kudos than Organizer Chen. Last week Hankow correspondents asked the Great Organizer to confirm or deny persistent rumors in high Chinese quarters that he has been advising the Generalissimo to make peace with Japan. Replied Chen Li-fu: “Our fundamental policy is unchanged and we will not be intimidated by the threats to Hankow and Canton. If the Japanese finally come to realization of the folly of their course and are prepared to offer us a formula for an honorable peace let them do so. It is not for us to do the proposing, for that would be a gesture of submission.

“We are the victims, not the aggressors. It is Japan’s move.”

Scorched Canton. The famed “Scorched Earth Policy” of Generalissimo Chiang, to destroy everything of value in Chinese cities likely to be taken by the Japanese, reached its spectacular climax last week at Canton. Dynamite charges carefully laid a few days before under the principal public buildings, factories and utility plants of South China’s No. 1 city and No. 1 port, were touched off as the Japanese approached. Great fires sprang up, blazed over an area of several square miles. With Canton spurting smoke and flame, Chinese dynamiters wrecked the $8,000,000 Pearl River Bridge. The foreign quarter on Chameen Island was saved from catching fire only by a sudden shift in the wind.

Up to the last moment, 100,000 Chinese troops were reported resolved to defend Canton and solidly entrenched. Actually 1,500 Japanese soldiers, the advance guard of the Japanese invading force of 60,000, almost raced into Canton last week, having advanced 125 miles in ten days flat, without having been obliged to fight a single major battle. The Japanese, who had been told they must make “heroic efforts to take Canton at any cost by November 3,” Birthday Anniversary of the great Emperor Meiji, thus found themselves 13 days ahead of schedule.

1,500 & 50,000. Some 50,000 Chinese remained in Canton, from which hundreds of thousands fled in recent weeks, pitiful refugees. The 1,500 Japanese at latest reports had not run amok as Japanese did after the fall of Nanking, but were described by Associated Press as busy trying to check civilian looters and Chinese who were setting fresh fires. The Canton waterworks were wrecked by Chinese to cripple fire fighting efforts.

Silver Bullets? The Chinese who had commanded Canton’s defenses, General Yu Han-mou, Military Governor of Kwangtung Province, ceremoniously surrendered to the Japanese. His Chinese enemies accused him of taking “Silver Bullets” (bribes), his Chinese friends warmly defended him. They said the Generalissimo had withdrawn so many troops from South China, believing the Japanese would not attack Canton until after they seized Hankow, that when the surprise offensive came fortnight ago it was impossible to do more at Canton than carry out the “Scorched Earth” orders, duly executed under General Yu.

His friends recalled that General Han Fu-chu, who did not surrender to the Japanese after he lost Tsingtao but fell back with his Chinese troops, was later executed by order of Generalissimo Chiang as a traitor, and that during the 15 months of the present war about 40 defeated Chinese commanders have been executed. In Canton, “The Birthplace of the Chinese Revolution,” impassioned telegrams were received from Chungking in which Chinese President Dr. Lin Sen and Dr. Sun Fo, son of Dr. Sun Yatsen, “the Father of the Republic,” exhorted the Cantonese to “defend your sacred soil.”

Scorch Hankow? No sooner had Canton fallen than the Japanese announced their military timetable now called for the capture of Hankow by November 3″, “The Sacred and Imperial Birthdate.” This week, far ahead of schedule, the advance Japanese forces, behind a murderous airplane and artillery bombardment, hammered into Hankow. Chinese military heads, unwilling to stage a bloody last-ditch defense, abandoned the city, leaving squads behind to dynamite anything of value to the Japanese. Terrorized Chinese clamored at the barricades to Hankow’s foreign areas as flames roared through the city. Generalissimo Chiang enplaned for a new military headquarters in the interior, Mme. Chiang flew to Chengtu, northwest of Chungking.

Holdup. At Shanghai this week as the U. S. Dollar Line’s 22,000-ton President Coolidge prepared to pull out of the Yangtze mouth, Shanghai customs officials, acting on orders from Japanese military authorities, suddenly suspended the vessel’s clearance papers. Reason: stowed aboard was silver worth $4,500,000, mostly bullion belonging to the Chinese Government but some of it jewelry and silver ware donated by patriotic Chinese for the purchase of war materials. The consignment was on its way to New York’s Chase National Bank. The Japanese claimed that the silver rightfully belonged to the Japanese-controlled new Chinese Government at Shanghai. Dollar Line officials, unwilling to anchor the ship indefinitely off the China coast, grudgingly unloaded the silver and clearance papers were reissued. The shipment was stored in the Chase offices at Shanghai while U. S. diplomatic officials pondered what to do next.