Wairarapa Times-Age THURSDAY, JANUARY 11, 1940. THE FAR EAST AND EUROPE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 January 1940, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age THURSDAY, JANUARY 11, 1940. THE FAR EAST AND EUROPE

A FORMER New Zealand journalist. (Air Ivan Palmer) was quoted in an Auckland message on Tuesday as. stating that : “Paradoxically, the ultimate outcome of events in China, and the rest of the Far East depends on the European war.' It may perhaps be doubted whether there is anything .particulars, paradoxical about this state ol: affairs. Nothing is moie obvious than that the outcome of the European war must influence profoundly, for good or ill, the course of events throughout the world. The victory lor which , the Allied nations are fighting would be a barren thing if it did not open the way to a drawing together of peaceful nations which \\ i make it more and more difficult. for any government to engage in a policy of aggression or brigandage or to persevere m a policy of that kind. Apart from any positive action that might be taken on behalf of China, for example, or in defence of the rights ol Third Powers, it need not be doubted that an Allied victory in Europe would give Japan weighty additional reasons rot discontinuing her undeclared war on China. It is probably upon an Allied victory, witli all that it may mean in tle re-establishment of international law, that China, must depend for any early and considerable relief from the horrors and calamity of the Japanese invasion. Bravely and. doggedly as the Chinese are defending themselves, their immediate prospects cannot be called encouraging. On top of all that, had gone before, the recent loss of Nanning, an important, link with French Indo-China, was a serious blow and one which demonstrates only too clearly that the Chinese are still far from being able Io deal effectively with the invader and despoiler of their territory. Nanning was the main gateway for the entry of motor fuel and other military essentials into South-West China, from French IndoChina.' Observing recently that the loss of. Canton was. the great supply route disaster of the first period of hostilities, an oversea, correspondent added that the Japanese capture of Nanning’, which is linked to Indo-China. by rail, road and river, and was the shortest, haul from the outside world into China, is unquestionably the most damaging military blow suffered by the Chinese in the second period of the war. which is usually reckoned to have begun with the shift of the bases of Chinese resistance to west and south-west areas after, the fall of Hankow. Actually the loss of Nanning transcends in importance the fall of Canton, for the closing of the Pearl River was only the beginning of the now complete blockade of the China coast. Now that China has lost Nanning, her only available avenues of import, and export- are a single-track, narrow-gauge railway 860 miles long, connecting Yunnanfu with Haiphong in IndoChina, the Burma Highway, and the overland route to Russia. In the latest extension of their invasion, the Japanese have taken an important and damaging step towards depriving China of effective contact with the rest of the world. They have brought into nearer prospect a state of affairs for which Chiang Kai-shek and other leaders are said long to have planned and prepared —the complete isolation of China. In the words of the correspondent already quoted:—■ China faces years of fighting with the small arms and light artillery for. which she can make her own ammunition in the seventy arsenals scattered through what the Chinese term Free China. Such luxuries as tanks and artillery will be preserved for the day upon which China -pins her faith—when the Japanese, who can capture any given point but cannot subdue any given area, grow weary of maintaining huge garrisons .to police vast areas paving inconsiderable dividends, and begin withdrawing t,o bases controlling the immediate hinterland of the main ports. Against this rather dismal prospect and against all that China is suffering, there is to be set the fact that Japan is involved in serious economic and political troubles occasioned by the terrible drain of the undeclared war and the maintenance in Chinese territory of an army of more than a million men. The attempt to set. up a now, Central Government in China under Air Wang Ching-wei no doubt has some genuine significance as an indication of the anxiety ol the Japanese to find a way of escape from the dilemma in which they are involved in China. The proposed government, if it is brought into existence, will be a puppet administration, under Japanese patronage ami tutelage. .The peace which Japan is said lo contemplate concluding with the new Central Government would be a mockery. Peace made in these conditions no doubt would be rejected with contempt by the Chinese nation. It is something to the good, however, that Japan is reduced to such shoddy shifts and devices. An Allied victory and the defeat of aggression in Europe might he expected furl hello weaken and undermine Japan’s position in China and correspondingly to brighten the outlook from the Chinese standpoint.