JAPANESE DEFEAT

Evening Star, Issue 23699, 5 October 1940, Page 16

JAPANESE DEFEAT

DUE TO RUSSIAN TANKS Something closely resembling a rehearsal of the newest mechanised tactics by which tho German armies smashed through tho French lines in Northern France took place at Nomonliau, on the Manchukuo-Mongolian border in September, 1939, when the Far Eastern Red army inflicted a bloody defeat on Japan’s finest troops, says a writer in 1 The Times.’ That battle closed five months of continuous warfare between Russian and Japanese armies. The dispute arose over conflicting Soviet-Japanese claims to a relatively minute portion of the illimitable empty plains where nomadic Mongo] tribes live with their flocks and herds. Tho land included the Halha (or Khalkha) River, which both sides covoted for its strategic value. Who now holds the river has not been disclosed by either Japan or Russia, but when the cease fire first sounded Russia was in possession of the ground. Newspapers and correspondents can be muzzled,' but not returned soldiers. The

Japanese War Office admitted to 18.000 casualties, and the Japanese masses have a good idea of what happened. Recently, just after the defence lino in Northern France had been broken by similar methods, the story was told to a gathering of retired officers in Tokio. The Japanese forces, it was then disclosed. had been beaten by huge tanks throwing flames some 30yds further than the Japanese tanks opposing them could reach. The effect was irresistible and horribly destructive. Hundreds of Japanese infantry were found dead on the battlefield burned beyond recognition. The Japanese were using their best troops from the Kwangtung army, which has stood on guard in Manchukno against Russia since the China war began. SEVEN HUNDRED TANKS. This army is partly mechanised, and has Japan’s best tanks as well as a strong air force. The air force, according to Japanese reports, quickly mastered the Far Eastern army’s aeroplanes, but was mastered by the latter’s tanks, of which 700 were employed along with 50,000 infantry, according to the Information Department of the War Office in Tokio. The same source .states that by the middle of September large Japanese I

reinforcements bad been concentrated and were preparing a counter-offensive. Before it could be opened the two Govenimeuts signed a truce. The Japanese military authorities, in a published statement, allege that the outbreak of war in Europe bad caused Russia to realise that continued fighting in the Far East was meaningless. As the Soviet assault on Finland was then impending, this explanation may well be correct, but it needs to be suplomented by the facts given above. The discovery of the terrific powers of those new tanks, ami the knowledge that the flat Manchurian plain offered opportunities for developing their maximum power, was the decisive factor in influencing the Japanese army to accept a truce. At the- time the Soviet Government was preparing its final battle against the Japanese it was deeply engaged in secret negotiations with Germany. All the facts arc concealed, so it can only he suggested as a hypothesis that the tanks may have been acquired from Germany. But Germany was at the time desperately anxious for an agreement with Russia and if she sold tanks to Russia she would obtain an exact knowledge of their effects on highlytrained troops.