Truce

Heavy fighting on the four-mile Russo-Japanese front in the Far East (TIME, Aug. 15) continued last week right up to the moment when a truce was made in general terms at Moscow. Its practical details were arranged on shell-pitted Changkufeng Hill by Japanese Colonel Goro Cho and Soviet General Grigory Shutern.

Associated Pressman James D. White cabled that he had a "ringside seat" from which he watched one of the concluding Soviet bombardments: "It was warfare in dead earnest. . . . Six-inch projectiles came over at the rate of at least six a minute. Today's cannonade removed all doubt in the minds of observers as to the accuracy of Soviet artillery. Invariably one or two sighting shots were followed by a series of direct hits. . . . At the foot of Changku-feng Hill a village blazed fiercely. Hundreds of shells had scored direct hits."

According to Japanese accounts the Red Army never charged with the bayonet. After a heavy barrage the Russian infantry advanced supported by tanks, threw hand grenades from a distance of a few yards, then fled. At any rate, by armistice hour Soviet attacks had not dislodged the Japanese from Changkufeng, although the hill was deeply pitted with craters made by Russian shells.

Shigemitsu & Litvinoff. In Moscow, truce grew last week directly out of negotiations carried on for the past three weeks by roly-poly Soviet Foreign Commissar Maxim Maximovich Litvinoff and pegleg Japanese Ambassador Mamoru Shigemitsu (who is a great pal of pegleg Correspondent Walter Duranty). The facts about disputed Changkufeng Hill as far as the diplomats could agree last week were: 1) although Moscow claimed the hill under a Russo-Chinese treaty of 1886, for many years it had been completely vacant; 2) Koreans and Manchukuoans had from time to time gone to it on festival pilgrimages unhindered by Red Army frontier guards; 3) Changkufeng first emerged from obscurity when a Soviet force occupied it on July 11; 4) Japanese forces drove the Russians from the hill on July 31. Not mentioned, of course, was the fact that Changkufeng, once firmly held and fortified by either Russia or Japan, would be an important strategic position, commanding with its guns a future naval base which the Red Navy hopes to build at nearby Posieta Bay.

To reach a truce, the Soviet Commissar and the Japanese Ambassador each made concessions. Mr. Shigemitsu gave up his original contention that the commission chosen to arbitrate the boundary should in fairness consist of one Japanese and one Manchukuoan for each Russian. He agreed to two Russians and two Japanese Manchukuoans. Mr. Litvinoff gave up his insistence that the agreement must specifically state that the boundary should be defined according to "maps bearing the signatures of official representatives of Russia & China." That point was left open. He further gave up his demand that the Japanese retire from the disputed territory before negotiations start.

The truce simply provided that the two armies "cease all military action on August 11 at midday, local time." According to official Red Army communiques from the scene, this left a Japanese force extending 650 feet into what Russia considers Soviet soil and a Soviet force extending at a different point 980 feet into what Japan considers Manchukuoan soil.

Flag of Truce. The negotiators in Moscow arranged that the local Soviet and Japanese commanders should meet on the field of battle under a flag of truce and exchange signed copies of a map, showing down to the last yard the positions which they held, so that no cheating could go on during the armistice. On the top of the hill, between a row of Japanese soldiers on one side and Russians on the other, the commanders met and argued from noon to 6:15 p. m. The officers reached a verbal agreement but signed no map at this parley, and the troops on each side moved back 90 yards, leaving the top of Changkufeng Hill again completely vacant.

Later white & yellow soldiers mingled peaceably, but without fraternizing, as they sorted out their dead. Japanese corpses were cremated on the spot in bonfires. The Russians dragged away disabled tanks as well as dead. The casualties:

. . . . Russian figures . . Japanese figures
Russian dead . . 236 . . 1,000
Russian wounded . . 611 . . 2,000
Japanese dead . . 600 . . 300
Japanese wounded . . 2,500 . . 600

Still No Map. Believing the fighting was over, some correspondents left the battle area. Almost at once Moscow charged that the Japanese had advanced afresh beyond the line they had agreed to hold. Only a few yards of blasted hummocks lay between the angry forces on Changkufeng Hill. Moscow claimed that the Japanese officers on the spot had refused to sign even a provisional map until they received further orders from Tokyo. Japanese papers fed the public with whoppers about how "our soldiers have been generously feeding the starving Soviet troops," charged that Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek had been in radio communication with Soviet Far Eastern Army Marshal Vasily Bluecher, begging him to restart the Russo-Japanese war as the only means of diverting the Japanese from capturing Hankow.

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