CHINA THE UNCONQUERABLE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 6, Issue 4, 14 September 1942, Page 4

CHINA THE UNCONQUERABLE

THE Chinese High Command on Saturday released its official casualty list for the live years of the war with Japan, and the figures amounted to 6.000,000. So vast is this number that for the average person Ihey defy comprehension— yet the fact remains that they represent less than one-six-tieth of China's vast population of 400,000,000 unified more today, against a common foe, than ever before in her colourful storied history. Her losses by comparison with the thirty-two thousand casualties from New Zealand in the last war are however much less severe and we can there fore appreciate the: pride with which the same communique announces that the great commander Chiang Kai Chek hah now a total of 13,000,000 men under arms wherewith to move up against the hated invader and hurl him into the sea. A brief study of the Chinese struggle, since the historic incident/ which gave Japan her first excuse to declare waion a large scale, leaves the onlooker staggered at China'y magnificent fight, and not a little ashamed of the manner in which the white races so called haters of aggression, steadily looked the other way and remained deaf to China's agony. In those eventful years when Japan's naval andi military might without- vestige of reason or legitimate excuse ploughed ruthlessly through the corpses of China's patriots the vow to fight back as never before was takek up with a. determination that has never since been allowed to die. For eighteen months when, the inhuman invaders sweeping through the southern capital with carnage and fire, and spreading horror a.nd terror by their attrociti.es and lust, the Chinese patriot army, scattered, and demoralised were rallied by the personality of one man. Guerilla tactics were the only hope for China until reorganisation Avas possible. Arms, they had none, except those which were seeping through from Soviet Russia, the only nation showing a hint of human sympathy for the persecuted nation of long suffering China. To our unutterable shame when the heroic general had at last succeeded in rearming his troops, the British hand of officialdom striving to keep the peace with swashbuckling Japan closed the Burma Road, along which was beginning to stream a flow of armaments from America, and Europe to assist the oppressed. We can salve our consciences by reflecting that the closure was lifted again, but the example serves to indicate just how far a weakened foreign policy can allow us to drift down the clear cut avenues of right and wrong. Since then China has, by a miracle succeeded in establishing her own arms industries in the interior, with the help of Russian experts, while across the Pacific an endless stream of aircraft is flying. To-day she is pushing the invaders back at a rate unbelievable twelve months ago. Again we repeat, that her armies may yet be the salvation of her Allies the Anglo-American races.