TOPICS OF THE DAY

Waikato Times, Volume 122, Issue 20496, 12 May 1938, Page 8

TOPICS OF THE DAY

China Strikes t Back Many expert opinions will have to be revised if the Chinese should inflict a major defeat on the Japanese in southern Shantung. Japanese military prestige has never contemplated such a blow; indeed, the Japanese Government and army expected no resistance worth the name. The air-raids on Chinese cities have been meant to terrify civilians into a clamour for peace against their own Government. The cruelties inflicted by Japanese soldiery upon helpless and destitute people were designed to hasten the collapse of Chinese morale and the disintegration of Chinese resistance. But once again, as already in Spain, it has been shown that aeroplane bombardments, while terrible in the immediate shock, produce a widespread reaction of anger and resentment quite beyond the calculation of the terrorists; and it is the fruit of these atrocities that Japan is gathering now on the Grand Canal before Suchow. In Spain, after all, Spaniards are fighting Spaniards, even when the brutalities of the “total” war, as conducted by Italians and Germans, receive full measure of execration.—Sydney Morning Herald.