War of Jehol

"China may not have shot and shells, but each Chinese can stop one! Our soldiers are unarmed--unclothed--but we have our lives to give. Let the enemy come, even throughout China, and kill a hundred million! We are very productive and will send more. Lives are China's ammunition!"

Thus last week in Nanking, China's capital, spoke Foreign Minister Lo Wenkan with appropriate frenzy, pardonable hyperbole. Nearly all the 400 million Chinese felt as strongly as Mr. Lo that China must resist Japan's new offensive to seize Jehol.* Meantime tramp, tramp, relentlessly down from Manchuria pressed Japanese soldiers numbering 60,000 at most. They were reinforced by 40,000 Manchurian (Chinese) mercenaries, but their weapons were those of the Machine Age. Tensely China, the world's most populous nation, quivered between ardor and despair.

Padded Uniforms, The sturdy North Chinese soldier fights (hyperbolic Mr. Lo notwithstanding) neither unarmed nor unclothed. His rifle, his cotton uniform stuffed with wadding and his tough constitution, inured to sub-zero winters, should make him no mean match in freezing Jehol for men from Japan's warm islands. Last week Japan's three-barbed offensive, closing in on Chengteh, the capital of Jehol, from Kailu, Chinchow and Suichung, advanced through snows as much as a foot deep, braved blizzards which reduced visibility at times to nil, plunged on with thermometers so low that Japanese machine guns occasionally jammed, frozen tight.

In the northern spearhead marched Japan's Sixth Infantry (from her balmy, almost tropical island of Kyushu). Wearing mittens, shawls and everything they could put or tie on, the tropical Sixth rushed at 12DEG below zero upon Chinese who shot first from behind the rocks of rolling foothills, then from behind the crags of higher and higher mountains as they fell back upon Chihfeng.

Niagara of Bombs. Savage Japanese bombing ahead of her advancing troops explained some of their successes, scarcely all. Foreign military attaches were frankly amazed when the middle Japanese spearhead plunged with seeming ease into Chaoyang, the second largest Jehol city, supposed to have been defended by large Chinese forces guarding an "impregnable pass." Swooping down on more than 1,000 Chinese soldiers in the pass, an entire Japanese air squadron loosed a Niagara of thundering bombs. "I think," reported the Japanese squadron leader, "that we just about wiped them out."

Japan's southern spearhead, plunging upward from Suichung, was for some reason largely composed of the Empire's most cold-hardened troops, soldiers from Hokkaido, northmost major island of Japan. To reach Lingyuan they would have to take two mountain passes of great natural strategic strength. Reputedly these passes were held by picked troops sent down from Chengteh by the Governor of Jehol, redoubtable Tang Yulin (see col. 1) and up from China proper by "Young Marshal" Chang Hsueh-liang of Peiping.

Heavy Chinese field guns boom-boomed all week not far from Shanhaikwan, the only city inside the Great Wall of China held by Japan. When nothing came of all this booming, Japanese suggested that the roar of China's guns (possibly firing blanks) was a bluff "to scare off our observers and cover large Chinese troop movements into Jehol."

Morale High. First white war correspondent to report from central Jehol was United Press's Herbert R. Ekins. "I saw the real picture of warfare today," he flashed from Lingyuan. "Passing through three lines of Chinese trenches I witnessed three Japanese airplanes flying out of the east circle low. . . . One plane dropped a bomb which exploded with a terrific blast, but, except for ripping a huge crater in the ground, it merely injured a 10-year-old boy.

"Even while Chaoyang was falling, I saw long lines of Chinese soldiers moving, but all moving forward toward the front. Morale is high among the troops. I saw but few refugees coming back from areas already being bombarded or facing imminent warfare. Across this sector there is audible the dull thudding artillery, the sound of rifles cracking, machine guns snarling. To the observer it means war is relentlessly approaching."

"Emperor's Private Ambassador." Overshadowing all else in Chinese minds last week was the appalling question whether Japan would confine herself to Jehol (which she terms a renegade province of her puppet state, Manchukuo) or would hurl her armed might upon Tientsin, Peiping and other key cities of China proper.

The order thus to invade territory which even Japan calls "China" without quibbling would come from the Tokumei Zenken Taishi, the "Emperor's Private Ambassador" in Manchukuo, His Excellency General Nobuyoshi Muto, bland, august and grim. In a most ominous proclamation this week, the Tokumei Zenken Taishi declared: "Should the Chinese undertake operations against our troops [as Chinese had already done] the hostilities may inevitably spread to North China, responsibility for which must be borne by the Chinese authorities."

Mad with fear (as well they might be) hundreds of Japanese Peiping residents as well as North Chinese piled onto trains bound for Central China and Shanghai whither 3,882 cases of Manchu treasures were lately shipped from Peiping by the "Young Marshal," no fool (TIME, Feb. 20).

As the exodus threatened to become a stampede, Peiping newspapers published an amazing story, impossible to confirm. Far north in Manchuria, they declared, 60,000 Chinese irregulars had suddenly appeared under General Yang Shou-chu, captured six towns, 600,000 rounds of ammunition, 1,200 rifles, 282 Japanese officers & men, 16 mountain guns, 14 field guns and 13 machine guns. To this Chinese-rumored victory was added the assertion that "20 of the captured Japanese were executed on the spot though $100,000 gold was offered to spare their lives."

*Several pronunciations of Jehol are equally permissible. The "J" is pronounced either like R in ran or like the French J in jour. The "L" is silent in China proper, is sounded by Manchurians. According to the standard "Wade System" of rendering phonetics into English, Jehol is pronounced "Ruh-huh" and Manchukuo is pronounced "Mahndrowgwoh."

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