Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, JUNE 21, 1938. FLOODS AND WAR IN CHINA.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 June 1938, Page 6

Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, JUNE 21, 1938. FLOODS AND WAR IN CHINA.

"WHETHER the floods extending from the Yellow River were caused by Japanese bombardments breaking the dikes, or, as circumstantial reports have ’ the Chinese themselves broke the protective banks in order to hamper and impede the invading Japanese, it is clear that this last result has been and is being produced. As a measure of defence —one that has been compared with the burning of Moscow and devastation of territory that did so much to ensure the overwhelming defeat of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia —the flooding of a vast area of China must bring ruin and death to scores of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of the people of that country. At that heavy price, however, it seems likely that the Japanese strategic plans will be wrecked and that much of the advantage thus far gained by the invaders will be lost.

In light of these facts, it seems by no means unlikely that Marshal Chiang Kai-shek has deliberately followed the example set centuries ago by the Prince of Orange when he persuaded the people of the Netherlands to open the dikes and flood their country in order that the armies of the Duke of Alva might be defeated. It may well be that the Chinese leaders prefer that death and devastation should be spread through their country by floods rather than by ruthless invading armies.

Until the dikes confining the Yellow River were broken, the Japanese had. developed slowly, but with success that was never more than delayed by the stoutest and most: determined resistance the Chinese could offer, a strategic plan directed to an extending conquest of Eastern China and the establishment of unbroken communications from north to south.

Making methodical use of railway and., other communications, the Japanese have been profiting by opportunities to outflank and threaten the envelopment of the defending armies. The invaders have been free at will to change the locality of their attacks and have seized one centre of communications after another. Following on the capture of Suchow, they were driving westward by way of Chenchow in operations which not only menaced the route by which China obtains supplies from Russia, but were helping also to open the way to a drive on Hankow.

At a strdke, the floods have deprived the Japanese of their hard-won continuity of communications and have, for the time at least, destroyed the value of much of the road and railway system wrested from the Chinese in desperate fighting. Captured territories of wide extent have been made impassable and it is stated that the Japanese can now advance on Hankow only by way of the Yangtse valley, which is itself in danger of inundation.

In the extent to which it is defined, the position goes far to justify the view that Japan’s war leaders went hopelessly astray in estimating China’s powers of resistance. At. tremendous cost, the invading armies have gained general control over a vast, expanse of territory — though in much of it their communications are being harried actively by Chinese guerillas—but it is becoming, as one commentator observed recently, “a question whether the Japanese financial, industrial, and even social fabric can stand the strain much longer.”

With something like a million men under arms on the mainland of Asia—a proportion of them keeping watch and ward in Manehukuo against the ever-piesent possibility of attack by Russia —Japan as yet is reaping no economic or commercial advantages from her invasion of China and seems little enough likely to do so for a long time to come. With the Yellow River floods extending and” magnifying the task of invasion in a degree yet to be measured, it becomes clearer than ever that the Japanese militarists are not only inflicting, a frightful harvest of death and untold misery on China, but are pursuing a course well calculated to bring catastrophe on their own country.