"Guns & Bugs"

The Japanese "grand push," launched ten weeks ago to capture the Chinese "Hindenburg Line" and the strategic Lung-hai Railway, was still stalled last week on the banks of the Grand Canal in southern Shantung Province, 35 miles northeast of Suchow. Fast-striking Chinese guerilla units, employing shifting flank attacks, last week struck at all sides of the Japanese forces, spread out in a rough quadrangle in the Shantung area. Towns were taken, then recaptured as neither side made an effort to hold positions for long. Chinese guerillas tore up sections along 40 miles of the Tientsin-Pukow railway in the north, blocking Japanese reinforcements & supplies and all week Japanese bombers flew over their isolated posts dropping food & munitions. At week's end the Japanese were reported hurrying reinforcements north from the Shanghai area and south from Yenchow to relieve their hard-pressed troops.

Fiercest back -& -forth fighting took place at Taierhchwang, 45 miles northeast of Suchow. Time & again the town changed hands and before long the ancient walls and mud huts were leveled. At last reports the Japanese had occupied the city, entered Kiangsu Province.

In Hankow, delegates to the emergency session of the Kuomintang Party Congress, elated over recent Chinese successes, conferred on Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek the title "Tsung Tsai" of the Kuomintang. China's dominant party. "Tsung Tsai" has almost thesame meaning as "tsung Li," the Kuomanting title fro Dr. Sun Yatsen, which translates as Fuehrer orDuce. However, Kuomintang delegates last week shied away from the dictatorial connotations of Chiang's new title, insisted that it merely meant "Leader of the Party."*

Meanwhile from Swiss Dr. Herman H. Mooser, League of Nations health official in Central China, came a warning that China is up against another foe--typhus (see p. 32). "Typhus is likely to cause the collapse of all the Chinese armies in the central area. I don't see how they can escape it." warned the League official.

*Il Duce del fascismo, Benito Mussolini's exact title, means ''The Leader of the Fascist Party."

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