War or Peace?

Along the southern borders of Kwangsi and Yunnan Provinces 200,000 of the best troops China possesses fingered their rifles last week, awaiting a showdown in the game of pressure diplomacy across the frontier. In the last two months Japan's hell-for-leather Army mission had twice pushed negotiations with French Indo-China to a stalemate, had threateningly packed its bags, then backed down. But each time the Japanese came back with even stiffer demands. Last week they pushed hard for the most drastic terms of all.

Brusquely they issued an ultimatum demanding air and naval stations in French Indo-China and the right to transport more troops across the peninsula for a backdoor attack on China. There were rumors that they wanted to subdivide the country into a northern, Japanese-controlled state, a central buffer, and a southern, French-controlled section.

To show they meant business they ordered the evacuation of Japanese nationals from Indo-China, began moving them to the port city of Haiphong. Major General Issaku Nishihara, head of the mission, gravely warned: "When I leave French territory you may say the crisis has been reached." But the same day Japan backed down again, then announced that the negotiations were again going along smoothly. The Foreign Office in Tokyo glibly denied that there had ever been any ultimatum anyway.

Two days later Japan brought its ebb-&-flow, bluff-&-counterbluff attack to the flood for a fourth time, smashed through to a final decision. The French agreed to permit three Japanese air stations in Tonkin, with 6,000 troops to garrison them, and granted immediate landing of a limited number of soldiers at Haiphong. But the agreement did not come soon enough to satisfy the fire-eating leaders of Japan's South China Army. Before Major General Nishihara could communicate with them, they had crossed the border at Dong Dang, engaged in a bloody, two-hour midnight skirmish with the French defenders. Next morning Tokyo announced the surrender of the French, and the Japanese marched triumphantly on, while their Foreign Office virtuously announced that the clash "was entirely due to misunderstanding on the part of French Indo-China."

When embattled Britain bowed to Japanese threats two months ago by closing the Burma Road, China's reaction was immediate and blazing. From the Communist Sian Jih Pao to the Ministry of Finance's China Times the whole Chinese press showered scorn and hate on the British Empire.

Last week with only the shadow of Germany protecting the colonies of defeated France, this storm of Chinese wrath was turned on the whole Western world. For three years, Chinese reasoned, one of the important aims of their fight had been to keep the Orient open to the white man. At any moment China might have had peace by abandoning him and joining the Japanese New Order in Asia. Yet China fought on. In return the Western democracies had helped China considerably, but first through witlessness and later through helplessness had done considerably more to smooth the path of Japan. The Open Door was closed now, perhaps forever. Britain and France had ceased to exist in the Chinese reckoning. There was talk of the U. S. Navy occupying the British base at Singapore to safeguard democratic interests in the Far East. But a cargo of San Francisco's old streetcar tracks was about to leave the U. S. last week to make more guns to kill Chinese. In Chungking, America had become only an expression of distaste.

The ideas and ideals which had once been formidable forces in the development of New China began to crumble too. No man in the Chinese capital would speak for democracy. Chinese officials found that China's George Washington, Sun Yatsen, had never advocated "capitalist democracy." Theoreticians repeated their belief that China would have a "special kind" of democracy. Abandoned by the West, China was abandoning the West.

What form this abandonment would take was something to be threshed out in the inner councils of the Chungking Government. One faction insisted that China must turn to Russia. In that case China would have to squelch her own Right

Wing, would have to make and keep peace with her Communists.

Another possibility was Japan. If the French could surrender without shame, why not the Chinese? If France can cooperate with Germany, why not China with Japan? With their Army still intact, their Government functioning efficiently, the enemy stymied, the Chinese could still sit down at a conference table with the Japanese without loss of face.

While China weighed these problems last week Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek never faltered. The "Gissimo" was determined to hang on till the end. He still has enough ammunition left for another year of fighting; the morale of his Army is unimpaired. But he knew and China knew that with the Japanese about to attack on his flank from Tonkin, now, if ever, was the time to listen to Japanese overtures for peace.

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