CARRYING ON

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20919, 26 September 1939, Page 12

CARRYING ON

OPTIMISM OF CHINESE VITALITY OF ANCIENT LAND unMRS WILL NOT WIN WAR With considerable interest I read on the front page of my morning paper that Japanese bombing planes over Chungking have blown up the plant of the newspaper, Ta Kung Pao, and inflicted heavy casualties among people waiting at the Yangtse ferry landing for a boat to take them over to the south bank. For only a few days ago I was in Chungking and apparently I flew out just in time to miss the summer bombing season, writes Randall Gould in the Christian Science Monitor. Thinking about this bomb raid brings the fact into dramatic perspective, but I have been conscious of my mental confusion ever since I returned and I offer no apologies because I have been in two worlds. The more I am questioned about Chungkung the more I realise that. Nobody who has not ben in Chungking as the new National Government capital can quite understand what I mean. Because coastal China is now fairly thoroughly occupied, there is an increasing tendency at such points as Shanghai—and probably even more so in America and other faraway places—to think of the ■war as more or less over. But in Chungking they seem quite honestly to feel that the war has hardly more than started. The Chinese are a historically minded people; perhaps too much so. One or two scoffing foreigners at Chungking told me that the Chinese were altogether too good at explaining defeats into victories, and making a merit of retreat. They said that the process of trading time for space had reached such a point that now the Government regards a Chinese withdrawal, and a corresponding Japanese occupation, as great good luck for China. That sort of thing (said they) is silly. Japan is taking China and the Chinese are regarding it as a joke on Japan. Guerilla Warfare Certainly there is room for debate on the point and most of us agreed that guerrilla warfare, even when carried on vigorously, is not the way to press home an ultimate victory. But the spirit of Chungking, optimistic and discounting all hardships and losses in advance, is a thing extremely hard to resist or to put out of mind, I discovered back in Shanghai. In my discussions I try to avoid setting myself up as a Chinese apologist or a Far East prophet. It would be ridiculous to indulge in bombastic optimism about the present Chinese position. China is still due for all kinds of troubles and reverses, beyond any doubt. These summer bomb raids are a case in point. During the winter, a northern high-pressure atmospheric situation and a southern low-pressure zone kept Chungking in a climatic trough where warm air fanned in from the coast was continually shrouding the city in a mist through which Japanese bombers could not penetrate. It was obvious that summer would bring clean air—and raiders. That has happened. The event had been anticipated and guarded against as much as possible. More could not be done. It was realised there must be loss and suffering, with more to follow. In imagination I can see Chungking after those raids—a city smitten and hurt, but quickly effecting repairs and carrying on» Bombing won’t win the China war. The military situation is to all intents and purposes at deadlock. Such cruelties as these bombings of China’s cities are gratuitous, but to be expected as normal products of the abnormal controlling mentalities. It seems to me best to think of them as little as possible and to give real consideration to the great and courageous wave of construction manifest in free China today. There is significance in that. If peace came tomorrow the work of building up the western provinces would go on as it is today, but faster. The vitality of this ancient land, now being reborn, is completely astonishing. And so is its iron nerve.