HOW FAR WILL JAPAN GO?

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 82, 30 December 1937, Page 6

HOW FAR WILL JAPAN GO?

The war in .China is entering upon a new phase. Military effieiency will count ior less now, and toughness of national character and resources in men and food will place the Chinese npon more equal terms with the Japanese. Up to date the honours of battle have all been with Japan. Have the Chinese, then, been beaten, and is the present Japanese eompaign merely the long-drawn mopping-]ip of resistance which will meet a predetermined end? The angwer is that Japan has not yet won the war. There has been no collapse of China 's determination to fight; the expected conquest of the capital of the National Government has not been followed by the expected dissolntion of its armed forces. There has been no permanent conquest of China. There has been no final deci'sion of the outcome of the war. The pqsition can only be realised by an examination of the map. The Japanese have swept their way down from the northern provincgs to Nanking, taking with this a strip of coastline and a fair slice of the hinterland. They dominate the great ports and commercial arteries, but military occupation destroys the very commerce it is intended to capture. It is now known that what has happened has been part of the Chinese war plan. Chiang Kai-shek decided to adopt the poliey of a fighting retreat and he has carried out his pfan. Possibly the resistance at Shanghai was kept up a little too long. That resistance may hg.ve cost the Chinese too highly in trained troops and war materials to enable them to fight the snbsequent actions in the manner they had designed. But apart from this faet the plan has been followed reasonably closely, This war eannot be judged by ordinary standards. In his warfare against the Tnrks, T. E. Lawrence led his Arabs in a long attack not on the Turks bnt on the materials of war of the Turks, because that was what they lacked most. He sought to destroy things rather than men and succeeded spiendidly. In his campaign against Japan the Chinese leader has realised that it is no clash of armies bnt a war between an army and a people. And the people is rieh in only one thing— territory. i The present Chinese strategy is to give the Japanese as much territory to cover for as long a time as is possible. For every mile that is added to Japanese conqnests means more troops to guard longer lines of communication, greater distances for the transport of supplies, more cost and more time for each manoeuvre. The real struggle will begin only after the Japanese have conquered as far as they are willing to go and are baited by the Chinese to go further. Wih they be lnred on in the manner that Napoleon was lured on until their reach is greater than their grasp ? And will the Chinese morale hold ont until the weight of Japanese material begins to lighten ? Those questions pose the whole problem of the issue of thrwar. The vast expanse of China is still mostly untrodden by the foot of the would'be conqueror. The maintenance of Japan 's conquest will need an army of 500, OoO men. Japan mig-ht yet be emeslied in her pwn snare. For while sbe may have the principal eities her citizens • will never be safe outside them ; while shc may hold the ports tliey will import and export little that will add to the conqueror 's wealth, and while slie has the railways she will be able to use them only for the transport of troops to continne fighting so that what she holds may not be lost to her. Even in the event of final victory Japan will be weakened for years. She will h.ave to replenish what she has expended in China and it will be very costly.