BURMA ROAD

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 2, Issue 231, 30 October 1940, Page 7

BURMA ROAD

HISTORY OF HIGHWAY CHINA'S GREAT WORK The Burma Road, now oL' great international importance, is a very new highway from China to the south, For countless centuries, of course, the route it lollowed has carried traffic of one kind and another. The camel caravan, the packhorse, the pack-mule and possibly the yak linked China to outer India in the past. China's war effort against Japan brought the Burma Road as a modern highway into being. "'lt could only have been accomplished by the people who built the Great Wall of China," said Mr F. Burton Leach, late Chief Secretary to the Government of Burma, 111 a lecture in London. * The. fact that the American Ambassador to China motored the whole distance from Chungking to Rangoon, about 2000 miles, in 13 days —an average of 150 miles a day!— proved that the road Avas fit for motor traffic. This journey was made as recently as December, 1938 The most difficult part of the 2000-mile .job from the Yangtze Valley to the Burma frontier was the 350 miles from Hsiakwau to the Burmese frontier. In this zone there lies a tangled mass of precipitous mountains, cleft by gigantic torrents and the upper waters of the mighty rivers. China was at war, but her sons, trained to engineering abroad, achieved tremendous feats, largely without mechanical appliances. The human labours of volunteers made magic for the mechanical age. The road thus came into being. Its importance is due to the fact that the Japanese Navy controls the Chinese seaboard. A railway, under construction, will give an alternative transport, but its day is not yet. China for long Avill rely on supplies on the Burma Road, providing the new order holds.