GRAVE CRISIS IN CHINA

...With an utterly exhausted country, with corruption running riot in every direction, with the Generalissimo's China doing business freely with the Japan-controlled China and the puppet government, and with the army underpaid and inflation getting steadily worse, and itself threatening the existence of masses, it would be hard to blame anybody for making terms with the enemy under these circumstances and waiting until another day to throw off the yoke...

...They have certainly not moved this time on so large a scale without the determination to show much more striking results than they did in their raid on the wheat bowl last year...

...It appears as if this time the offensive were directed to the safeguarding of Japan from American air raids as well as to the capture of the Peiping-Hankow railway...

...Chennault's American flyers...

...Just as the drive into India is aimed at stopping not only the supply of Gen...

...Hence the push inland to make impossible the establishment of American airfields in the regions around Chengchow...

...It is too early to determine exactly what the Japanese objective is in the new drive...

...But the stakes are so large for which they are gambling that the Japanese high command must be willing to risk greatly to achieve such a success...

...One must hope for the best, and it is of course obvious that the Japanese have not yet achieved any of bheir basic objectives outlined above and may yet be emphatically defeated, at least in the India region where at this writing another great battle is pending with the outlook favorable...

...The next few months will show whether they can carry on any longer in the absence of substantial, outside aid...

...Can China Hold Out...

...Whether China can hold out in the face of such frightful odds and the dreadful suffering of the Chinese people depends of course largely upon the will of the Generalissimo and his trusted leaders...

...That this drive is much more than their usual annual ravage-ment of a portion of China appears from the fact that it is being carried on by a very large force of Japan's best troops from Manchuria [released after the recent treaty with Russia], just as some of those now fighting around Imphal appear to have been drawn from the same important source—the Man-churian army is supposed to be the flower of the Mikado's forces...

...As our foremost military critics have pointed out, the Japanese can go anywhere in China that they wish whenever they desire to do so...

...But there are limits to human endurance even among so long-suffering and uncomplaining a people as the Chinese...

...If Japan's Drive Succeeds If the Japanese should stop the delivery of American supplies to the flight line, if they should make much more difficult the establishment in China of flying fields from which we could bomb the main Japanese islands, and if the Generalissimo should be compelled to move his capital again, Japan would have scored a major victory...

...Again, if the present Japanese movement in the Chengchow area succeeds, they will be in possession of the vital wheat bowl from which comes the wheat for 20,000,000 people...

...Hundreds and hundreds of square miles have now passed into Japanese hands...

...Stil-well's forces in Burma, but the delivery of goods to China through the air over the Himalayan "hump," so it may be possible that behind the present Japanese drive is a much more ambitious undertaking—a threat to Chungking itself as well as linking their central and northern China fronts and opening a vital inland supply route to take a heavy burden off their rapidly decreasing merchant marine...

...There would then be only the possibility of a long land war through Burma into China, or the capture of an important Chinese port by an American naval expedition, a difficult although not an impossible undertaking after we have advanced further by hedge-hopping from one group of islands to another...

...Even here, however, it must be recorded that China is not united, that the breach between Chungking and the Chinese Communists is not healed, despite the fact that they are both confronting the same enemy...

...Grave Crisis In China By OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD DESPITE all the optimistic reports sent out by Chungking the fact remains that the new Japanese offensive is spread over a wide front and is making great headway...

...They know exactly what the situation is in every field, and they are thoroughly familiar with what is happening in Chungking and elsewhere in China...

...They know just how poor and underpaid the Chinese forces are and how inefficiently supplied with arms and ammunition...

...Both sides have shown extraordinary powers of resistance and the Generalissimo has never for one moment weakened in his determination to achieve a final victory over the ruthless and cruel enemy which has now ravaged his country for nearly seven years...

...With this in their hands they would certainly be in a position to talk to the Generalissimo in stronger terms than they have before, the trump card in their hands being the stopping of air transport into China, and thus absolutely cutting her off from outside help and ending the activities of Gen...