Insufficient Sacrifice

The French Foreign Office last week was reported to have quietly given in to persistent Japanese demands that the railway from French Indo-China into interior Yunnan Province be closed to war supplies for Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's armies. With only a trickle of traffic going over the long rail and motor route from British Burma, the Chinese are now almost wholly dependent on the Soviet Union for their foreign supplies. These are either flown in by Russian planes or trucked in over the Sian-AIma Ata highway, linking China with Soviet territory, or the Lanchow-Ulan Bator Khoto highway, connecting China with Sovietized Outer Mongolia. Last week Japanese troops were spotted in Inner Mongolia, headed for the Lanchow-Ulan Bator Khoto road.

With continued Soviet assistance vital to China's resistance, Chungking, the official capital, last week commemorated the 21st anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution on a scale not usually given to foreign celebrations. Newspapers featured side-by-side portraits of the Generalissimo, Stalin, Dr. Sun Yat-sen and Lenin. At a mass meeting, Dr. Sun Fo, president of the Chinese Legislative Council, declared that China's only "true and real friend" was Russia. Premier Dr. H. H. Kung praised the achievements of the Russian Revolution, then berated the Chinese for not having sacrificed enough for victory.

"The Chinese insufficiently appreciate conditions whereon victory is based--national unity, sacrifice and discipline. The Chinese have unity, but have not attained sufficient sacrifice," said the Premier.

Taking their cue from the Premier's plea, the Executive Council made the first sacrifice, a decision not to send a Chinese exhibition to New York's 1939 World's Fair because of the "uncertainties of transportation." The supreme sacrifice was made by General Yu Han-mou, charged with the collapse of Canton's defenses, who was erroneously reported to have surrendered to the Japanese after the city's fall. According to Japanese reports, he was executed by the Chinese.

Japanese troops continued to press out from Hankow, where some 5,300 captured Chinese soldiers are soon to erect a memorial to commemorate the Japanese conquest. At week's end Japanese forces, driving southward along the Canton-Hankow rail line, had captured the strategic city of Yochow, 122 miles southwest of Hankow, and the northeastern gateway to Hunan Province where Chiang Kai-shek has established new military headquarters.

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