CHINA: Refills

The U.S. agreed last week to sell the Chinese Government 130 million rounds of surplus rifle ammunition. It had been made expressly for the Chinese Army’s 7.92-mm. Mausers (“Generalissimo” model) in Lend-Lease days, but never delivered. For months it had rested in U.S. West Coast dumps, no use whatever to the U.S. Army.

The Chinese were grateful. The ammunition would not win the civil war, but it would help. The Chinese Government hoped that Washington was about to see the logic of a larger proposition: that Nanking needed whatever it took to win the civil war and begin the reconstruction of China.