At the Tomb

Of China's 4,480,992 square miles Japanese forces took: 1,300 in the last week 14,565 in the last month 143,712 in the last year 643,712 since 1931

General Iwane Matsui, called "the Long-Eared" (a traditional Japanese sign of wisdom), last week made his triumphal entry into captured Nanking, the abandoned Chinese capital, outside whose walls stands the $3,000,000 tomb of sainted Dr. Sun Yatsen, "Father of the Chinese Revolution." That historic moment meant more to General Matsui than it would to most Japanese, for Revolutionist Sun spent many years in Japan, became a close friend of Matsui, who took up the doctrine of Pan-Asianism to which grateful Dr. Sun at the time enthusiastically subscribed.

At the last resting place of his old friend it was General Matsui's duty last week to complete the butchery of those Chinese troops, tragically misled, who, against the advice given by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's German military advisers, had been left to defend Nanking. It was a tiresome job, lining up hundreds of prisoners and shooting them down batch after batch. However, according to foreign correspondents who witnessed some of the executions, Japanese soldiers invited Japanese sailors as their guests and apparently all of them "thoroughly enjoyed it."

Meanwhile, Chinese civilians, who had hoped that the arrival of the Japanese would mean at least a return of peace & safety, were shot down on the slightest pretext until there were scores of bodies in the streets. Houses and shops were looted, women raped and the whole city ravaged according to an immemorial custom of war. Even fleeing refugees with whom the Japanese caught up were looted of their belongings. Only after the Japanese soldiers, drunk with victory, had been out of hand for several days did officers get them under control.

"We Are All Old." The alternative to direct Japanese rule in the conquered portions of China, now of vast extent, is the installation of a new Chinese government, acting of course as puppets of Japan. At Peking, the ancient capital of China, a group of Chinese with Japanese blessing last week proclaimed themselves "The Provisional Government of the Republic of China." They also intimated that for some time to come their attempts at governing will be circumscribed roughly within a 780-mile radius southwest of Peking (see map, p. 13), although Japan has so far conquered a much smaller area (barred). Dr. Tang Er-ho, a spry and bespectacled veteran of North China politics and graduate of Tokyo Imperial University, issued the proclamation in Peking. Alternately stroking his neat goatee and puffing on a long cheroot, he declared "We are all old men, without ambition to hold office, but we feel the responsibility of seeing that China is restored to normalcy, after which we will resign." Up Peking staffs ran the five-barred (red, yellow, blue, white & black) flag of the original Chinese Republic, founded in 1912 at Peking after the overthrow of the Manchu Dynasty, the staffs on which from 1927 to 1937 flew the red, white & blue flag of Chiang Kai-shek's Nanking Government.

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