Three Years of War

"Its length is 300 paces, and its width eight paces; so that ten mounted men can, without inconvenience, ride abreast." So wrote young Marco Polo after he first saw the bridge of Lukouchiao in the year 1277. But this same bridge, still standing and now named for the Venetian traveler, will be more remembered in history for a fateful incident which happened one hot, fretful summer night, 660 years later.

On the night of July 7, 1937, the commander of the Japanese North China Garrison, holding night "maneuvers" near the bridge, noticed that one of his men was missing. Jumping at once to the remarkable conclusion that the man had been kidnapped by Chinese troops and spirited into a nearby walled town, he demanded that his force be admitted to the town. The demand was naturally refused. Then, according to the Japanese legend, the Chinese wantonly opened fire on the innocent little servants of the Son of the Sun, and obliged them to fire back--and therefore obliged Japan to send about 1,125,000 armed men on to Chinese soil to establish a New Order in East Asia. Thus began the war in China. This week the China incident is three years old. In that time Republican Spain, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Finland, Norway, Denmark, The Lowlands, the Baltic States, even the French Empire, have all succumbed to treachery or superior military might. And all that time the Chinese race, supposedly the most craven and corruptible people on earth, have held back the sharp, mechanical thrusts of one of the three supposedly toughest and most intriguing countries on earth. All the world, including China, has been amazed at this heroic record.

In the first year Japan's advances were incredibly swift, at least by the standards of all previous wars. At something like forced-march rate, columns fanned out from Peking and Tientsin to west and south. Shanghai was taken after stubborn resistance (TIME, Aug. 30, 1937). The Chinese Armies fought rear-guard actions up to Nanking, where a ferociously maddened Japanese Army committed one of history's most terrible acts (TIME, Dec.27, 1937). Murder, rape, destruction, looting--a crazy vindictiveness on the part of the Japanese--resulted in some 50,000 civilian deaths.

Having nominally captured 465,000 square miles populated by 115,000,000 Chinese, the Japanese confidently (and therefore halfheartedly) offered peace. The Chinese refused. The Japanese set about trying to consolidate the occupied areas, riddled by guerrillas. During this process a large force allowed itself to be hemmed in by masses of Chinese at Taierchwang and suffered the worst Japanese defeat in modern history (TIME, April 25, 1938).

In the second year Japan's slowing thunderbolt almost rolled to a stop. Only major successes were the capture of Hankow, where the Government had lighted after the fall of Nanking, and whence it moved on to Chungking (TIME, Feb. 21, 1938); the dreadful bombing and subsequent capture of Canton (TIME, June 30, 1938), cutting off the supply route from Britain's Hong Kong to the interior; the investment of most of the coast line as far down as Hong Kong; the occupation, for strategic reasons, of Hainan Island; and terrific bombings of Chungking--which served to consolidate rather than break Chinese morale.

The third year, summer of 1939, opened with spectacular Chinese victories in Shansi Province. The Japanese shook up their high command and started a face-saving drive on Changsha. Their faces were slapped instead, in what Chungking called "the biggest single victory of the war." Desperate, the Japanese undertook a surprise attack, this time successful, on Nanning, in order to cut down on the flow of munitions from French Indo-China into China. This was a serious blow to the Chinese. The fall of Ichang early this month gave the Japanese a convenient base for new and heavier-than-ever bombing attacks on Chungking. But the biggest Japanese successes of 1939-40 were accomplished by the Germans in Poland, Norway, Flanders, France.

Each successive Hitler victory was in effect a Japanese victory. Each Allied setback loosened the pegs of prestige and force by which the French, British and Dutch held down their Far Eastern spheres of interest, whence came most of China's outside help. The Japanese well know that if they can shake those three nations loose, China will be nearly won. For China's only other friend and armorer is Russia, and across the dreary 2,000-mile road from Siberia, so rough that most trucks are permanently crippled by just one trip over it, China has been getting perhaps 10% of her outside supplies. Without outside help China is just about done for.

And so the campaign which the Japanese undertook against France and Britain in the East last fortnight was not only the most important of the China war's third year; it was likely to prove decisive, it might pave the way at last for the New Order.

Peace Coup? Under Generalissimo and Mme. Chiang Kaishek, China has superabundant morale for resistance, but determination will not ground enemy airplanes or choke rifles. So strong, however, is the determination of the present Chungking Government that even if Japan cuts off most of China's supplies, their capitulation is improbable. What is perhaps more possible, certainly what the Japanese hope for, is some sort of coup within Chungking --some violent episode of treachery like the famous Sian kidnapping of Chiang.

The Generalissimo remains the symbol of unity, idol of the people, leader of the Army--and if anything happened to him, China's morale, which is her most precious asset, would crumble. Or if any hurt should come to his fragile, energetic, moral wife, whose New Life Movement supplied China with its backbone of courage and kept it stiffened from 1937 to 1940, the result would be almost as serious.

In a high stone-walled Chungking compound, the "Gissimo" and "Gissima," as Chungkingites call them, receive hundreds of generals, diplomats, politicians, distinguished foreign journalists. Centre of resistance and focus of command, the compound is also an amusing object of gossip. No act of this remarkable pair is too trivial for discussion all over China: if he flies to Chengtu for two days' rest, it is taken to mean that the Government is moving; if she flies to Hong Kong to have her teeth fixed, it is rumored that China will borrow -L-25,000,000 from Britain.

Aside from some accident to the Chiangs the Japanese hope that the strong anti-Communist group in Chungking will become synonymous with a peace movement, that the old politicians will become traitors or appeasers--in short that the pattern of France will be repeated.

For a whole year, peace has been in the air in Chungking. Last July Ambassador Johnson was rumored to have smuggled in two Japanese agents in the rumble seat of his car (which has no rumble seat). One of them was supposed to be no less a person than Prince Fumimaro Konoye. British Ambassador Sir Archibald Kerr Clark Kerr was later said to have peace terms for Chiang. Mme. Chiang flew to Hong Kong: she was going to talk peace with Puppet-Elect Wang Ching-wei. The U. S., British and French Ambassadors met in Shanghai; they were talking peace. They met in Chungking; they were talking peace. Last week Shanghai's onetime Mayor Wu Te-chen was in Hong Kong; he too was rumored making peace feelers.

But whether or not the sentiment for peace grows in China, a Chungking armistice would not mean the end of the Far Eastern conflict. The last flanking movements in the three-year-old War in China had become the first forays of the Battle of the Eastern Empire (see p. 30).

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