Glorious 16th

Japanese courage and efficiency plus Chinese treachery and bungling made possible last week an epic and amazing relay race of conquest up the snow-swept mountains of Jehol and on to the Great Wall itself, upon which jubilant Japanese hoisted the flag of their puppet state Manchukuo.

Not a figure of speech, the Japanese Army's relay race plunged forward in such fashion that as soon as a slightly wear)' Japanese brigade had captured a Jehol city, another Japanese brigade, fresh and boiling with zeal, pressed on with the offensive, thus keeping the Chinese in ceaseless headlong flight. Even the Japanese General Staff was amazed by the utter crumpling of Jehol's defense as Chinese "generals" either deserted their troops and fled or broke out Manchukuo flags to welcome the invaders.

The Japanese goal, announced as an incentive, to Japanese valor by the General Staff, had been to capture Chengteh. the capital of Jehol, by March 10--anniversary of the capture of Mukden during the Russo-Japanese War which cost 97,000 Russian lives, 45,000 Japanese. Actually last week Jehol fell March 4. The relay race had been won in eleven days by Japanese brigades which advanced further than from Portland. Me. to Manhattan, sprinting more than 50 mi. on each of the last three days--about as fast as any modern army can climb mountain passes in the teeth of blizzards. Day before Jehol fell, her Governor, famed War Lord Tang Yulin who received correspondents fortnight ago confidently seated on an antique Manchu Throne, seemed to be in a befuddled stupor--possibly from opium which, as Jehol's chief crop, is supposed to have made Tang a Chinese silver dollar millionaire.

"I am in a difficult position," mused Governor Tang. "I don't even know where my troops are." Correspondents left him slumped in his great chair, staring vacantly out the window at some deer which nibbled unconcerned in the former deer park of the last Chinese Emperor. That night the distracted War Lord fled from Chengteh to no man knew where.

Next morning 3,000 Chinese soldiers with rifles and machine guns deployed as though to defend Chengteh. Through this Chinese force, which fired not a shot, dashed 128 Japanese, the extreme advance guard of Major General Tadashi Kawahara's 16th Infantry Brigade which, at 10 a.m., won the relay race and Japanese immortality.

Peiping Next? Scared white lest Jehol's routed troops should pour down through the Great Wall and sack Peiping was "Young Marshal" Chang Hsueh-liang.

"Shut the Great Wall's gates!" he ordered. "Close the Kupei Pass!" Frantically Chinese troops of the Peiping garrison rushed to obey orders and thus shut Jehol's luckless Chinese defenders out of China. Commandeering motor cars, trucks, carts and 10,000 Peiping rickshaws & coolies, the Young Marshal's troops sped 50 mi. to the Wall. No fool, War Lord Tang did not himself try to slip in from Jehol, but 242 motor trucks loaded with his "treasures" reached the Wall. Promptly the treasures vanished.

In a towering rage, young Marshal Chiang denounced Fugitive Tang as a "traitor to China," ordered his instant arrest if & when caught. Forgetting that he himself swore only a few weeks ago to defend Jehol to the last--as did the Chinese Nanking Government on the pledged word of Acting Premier & Finance Minister T. V. Soong (TIME, Feb. 27)-- the Young Marshal tried to blame everything on the Chinese soldiers he had just shut out of China.

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