UNRPA's Sorrow

On the flatlands of China's Honan Province, near Chengchow, a tiny rivulet of muddy water oozed into a dried-up channel and meandered sluggishly toward Pohai Gulf, some 400 miles to the northeast. The rivulet, a man-made branch of the Yellow River, was the first fruit of the giant flood-control effort to thrust "China's Sorrow" back into its pre-1938 bed. In Shanghai, UNRRA Engineer Oliver J. Todd, director of the project (TIME, June 17), contemplated news of the trickle with mixed emotions. "Todd Almighty" knew that this was no dream come true; in fact, a nightmare was just beginning.

For his project Todd last summer had won the cooperation of Chinese Nationalists and Chinese Communists. But last week the Communists were demanding a five-month postponement of further work on the river. In Yenan, Communist Spokesman Chou En-lai gave the official Communist reason: "It would destroy the lives and property of several million people" living in the path of the river's projected diversion. The Reds charged that resettlement of these millions had been delayed by the Nationalists' failure to make good a promised $15 billion CN ($4.5 million U.S.) relief payment to local Communist authorities.

The Nationalists retorted that the Communists intended to seize the fund for their party treasury, paying the displaced peasants in depreciated Communist currency and using the profit to buy arms. But the Nanking Government was so anxious to keep the Yellow River project alive that it offered to send a $5 billion down payment by UNRRA courier.*

This offering might undermine the Communists' formal objection to the project; but their real fear was that the revised river course would sever their armies in Honan and Shantung Provinces. They warned UNRRA that if work continued they would "feel free to take whatever action they deem necessary"--which obviously did not mean a lawsuit.

By March, Todd's Nationalist peasant workers could dump enough rock-fill into the new dikes to hold the diverted river's flow. If work stopped, however, Todd's uncompleted dikes might be washed out in the June floods. UNRRA wrung its hands and wondered which was worse: to risk disastrous floods by "China's Sorrow" or to risk hurting the Communist military position and thus sully UNRRA's spotless record of neutrality.

* The courier would have his hands full; in $2,000 Chinese bills, the payment would take up six cubic yards, equivalent in baggage bulk to two cords of kindling wood.

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