Toe-Hold

After a month of butting against stubborn Chinese defenders at a dozen points along China's Yellow River, from the Great Wall pass in northwest Shansi to Chengchow, 300 miles to the southeast in Honan, Japanese forces finally secured a toehold on the Chinese-held south bank of the river at Szeshui, Honan Province, Chinese sources admitted last week. Main Japanese objective since their December capture of Nanking has been to sever the vital east-west lifeline of central China, the Lunghai Railway defended by the so-called "Chinese Hindenburg Line." The Lunghai Railway connects (via the Peking-Hankow line) Chiang Kai-shek's capital at Hankow with Sian, capital of Communist-held Shensi and source of Soviet supplies coming in from Outer Mongolia. The Japanese force cut this link at Szeshui last week, but made no further advance after crossing the river. Chinese were reported to have blown up dikes along the Yellow River, flooding the countryside and thus blocking Japanese mechanized forces.

Chinese officials minimized the Japanese rail-link snipping at Szeshui, pointed out that there still remained open a five-day highway connection between Hankow and Sian. They announced that at Tungkwan, where the river crooks like an elbow between Shensi and Shansi Provinces, Chinese troops were still holding the main body of Japanese troops to the opposite bank of the river.

Military observers were ready last week to declare that, even if the Japanese now cross the Yellow River barrier and press on to Sian, their next objective, the magnificent month-long resistance by the ill-equipped Chinese armies ranks as a high-spot of the entire war. Chief factor in their success has been the employment of a new strategy--instead of retreating en masse before a Japanese front attack, the Chinese now split up into large-sized guerilla contingents, harass the Japanese at widely scattered points along the front. The Japanese have been forced to fan out their estimated 100,000 men in their Yellow River force along a 450-mile front, have been unable to assemble a force large enough for a mass crossing of the river.

A secondary factor of the Chinese resistance has been the weather. Heavy snowfalls, then freezing weather, mucked down Japanese tanks, motor transports in the loose soil of Shansi Province. Last week the Japanese were still sending brave bands across the river in rubber pontoon boats, frail craft menaced by floating chunks of ice,Chinese sniper bullets, whirling, angry waters.

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