Chahar

Over the line last week went 4,000 Japanese and Manchukuan troops assembled fortnight ago on the border between Manchukuan Jehol and Mongolian Chahar (TIME, Jan. 28). Striking quickly, with tanks, bombing planes, heavy artillery, the Japanese force swept aside frostbitten, ill-equipped Chinese irregulars along a 30-mile front, captured three towns. Estimated casualties 300.

Strangely both Nanking and Tokyo treated this latest incident with icy calm. After one day of flaming headlines, the Tokyo Press limited all descriptions of the fighting in Chahar to the barest of brief dispatches. Nanking, instead of screaming in the customary Chinese manner about the Rape of Chahar, sent out unofficial bulletins to announce that the entire "border dispute" was a "local affair," that peace had been restored, that there was nothing to worry about.

Foreign observers in Peiping promptly translated all this thus:

One of the most important purposes of Chinese Dictator Chiang Kai-shek's personal tour through Northern China was to buy with elaborate bribes the loyalty of Mongolian princes in Chahar. Chahar would be important to Japan not only as a future base for the invasion of Northern China, but also as a prime point on the strategic caravan route to outer Mongolia and Russia. The brief & bloody capture of this little corner of disputed territory last week was an obvious Japanese threat to Mongol chieftains to mind their manners. Nanking's complaisance was a fair admission that China's Nationalist Government was resigned to the eventual loss of Chahar, probably in return for a promise that for a little while yet, Peiping and Tientsin will not be captured.

Up from his seat in the Diet in Tokyo stood Foreign Minister Koki Hirota last week. "I am confident," said he, "that while I am in office there will be no war."

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