Asparagus & Oatmeal

Japanese infantry, slogging up the swampy banks of the Yangtze, supported by Japanese river gunboats and bombing planes, last week took the famed Chinese pottery centre, Kiukiang. their objective for the past month. In joyous terms, as though announcing a victory, the Chinese press boasted of the enormous quantities of shells and bombs the capture of Kiukiang had cost the Japanese. The heroic Chinese defenders of the Lion Hill Forts, sworn to fight to the last man rather than yield, were congratulated for having held out for 72 hours under heavy artillery fire before they fled.

Neutral military experts deduced from the information available that Chinese artillery has surprised the Japanese by its inaccuracy. Frail and thinly armored Japanese river gunboats had apparently been able to support the attackers. In Hankow, 135 miles above Kiukiang. the flight of the whole civilian population into the interior was ordered and organized last week by Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek. Most Government clerks and records had already been sent 650 miles further up river to Chungking. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Chung-hui gave a farewell party to the press before he departed, followed by the envoys of the Great Powers. In most urgent terms U. S. Ambassador Nelson T. Johnson sent Chinese authorities a list of foodstuffs badly needed by the U. S. river gunboat Monocacy. A Chinese clerk revealed the contents of this diplomatic document: "Among other things they asked for canned asparagus and oatmeal breakfast food--almost exactly that is what we have not got!"

Economic Deviltry. Under Japan's puppet Governments in Nanking and in Peking, according to dispatches, companies dominated by Japanese officials are being given monopoly franchises to operate utilities in Nanking and vicinity, many Chinese mines and virtually all inland shipping on the lower Yangtze. Owners of the properties were advised by Japan's Chinese puppets to turn over their properties in exchange for stock in the new firms, or face outright confiscation within ten days. Dispatches from Peking reported that in Nanking, Chinese peddlers are now employed in large numbers by Japanese narcotic jobbers to peddle opium and heroin openly at cut rates in paper packets selling for as little as 5-c- Chinese (1-c-). This is against the law but the peddlers go about pistol-on-hip, while Chinese policemen have been deprived of firearms by the Japanese.

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