"Mongokuo"

From the snowy wastes of Northern China came missionary reports last week that Mongol hordes have now established a. new Japan-controlled autonomous nation in Chahar Province "similar to Japan's puppet-state of Manchukuo," are calling it "Mongokuo." This territory, wedged between Manchukuo and Suiyan Province, is roughly the size of Ohio, has its capital at Chap Ser. Another slice of China has thus nearly if not quite been added to the Japanese Empire.

In China's adjacent Suiyan Province, where Japanese penetration was halted four months ago by Chinese troops, consternation reigned last week. Clarioned Suiyan's Chinese Governor General Fu Tso-yi: "We shall countenance no threat to the integrity of this province!" He mobilized and reviewed the whole of Suiyan's military might "in tribute to Chinese soldiers slain in the 1936 defeat of the Mongol horde." To Suiyan's rebuke, China's Nanking Government added another. Declared Wang Ching-wei, chairman of the Kuomintang (National Revolutionary Party) and onetime Foreign Minister: "Nanking is fully determined to support Suiyan against revolutionary movements."

Prime mover in Mongokuo's "independence movement," and Dictator Chiang Kai-shek's Bogieman No. 1, last week was triple-chinned Mongol Prince Teh, who for months past has dominated Mongokuo under Japan's aegis. Exclaimed a Chinese traveler, just returned to Shanghai after a six-month visit to Mongokuo: "I am astonished that the world has not heard of this new state!" For months Mongokuo has had a de facto government, headed by Prince Teh, together with an army of some 10,000 Mongolians and Manchukuoans officered and commanded by Japanese. Governmental departments are headed by Mongols, but are run by Japanese "advisers" as in Manchukuo.

Mongokuo has long had its own post office, issues its own stamps for internal use. Letters going "abroad" are handled by Manchukuo's post office. Mongokuo even flies its own flag, blue with a square of horizontal red, yellow, white and black stripes in one corner.

For months past military equipment from bullets to airplanes has poured in from Manchukuo. Some of the planes bear the Japanese emblem of the Rising Sun, others the crossed thunderbolts of Prince Teh. All Mongokuo's tanks and planes are in charge of Japanese mechanics.

These military preparations, so newshawks in China assume, are for a new Japanese attack upon Suiyan which must be conquered before Japanese militarists can begin to draw their projected iron ring around Russia's Outer Mongolia. Tokyo's bland explanation of Mongokuo's piled-up tanks and planes was lately voiced by a member of Japan's Foreign Office: "The Mongols are striving to preserve themselves from Communists against whom they are preparing for a war of self-defense." Overlooked by the Tokyo spokesman was the fact that the nearest Chinese Communist army was 400 miles from Mongokuo, is headed in the wrong direction, that Suiyan's Governor General Fu Tso-yi is rabidly antiCommunist.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.