Midnight Invasion

On the Chinese Independence Day last week gallant Generalissimo & Mrs. Chiang Kai-shek drove boldly down the main streets of Hankow, reviewing 80,000 Chinese among whom might easily have lurked a Japanese-paid assassin. Chicago Daily News's A.T. Steele cabled: "This was one of the Generalissimo's few public appearances...one of his most courageous gestures....Throngs composed of clerks, laborers, students and others who have been mobilized to assist in the defense of Hankow stood silent and awed as the Generalissimo and his wife drove by in an open car."

The atmosphere of Hankow had been "gloomy as a morgue," but at noon on Independence Day spirits rose as Chinese G.H.Q. announced that near Teian, 100 miles from Hankow, some 10,000 Japanese had been "wiped out in a four-day battle greater than Taierhchwang." This was not subsequently confirmed, but within an hour after the announcement the previously silent streets of Hankow became a bedlam of exploding firecrackers amid which Chinese newsboys hopped about selling Independence Day "Victory Extras."

Twenty-four hours later the Japanese Government launched a brand new major assault upon Chinese Independence in general and the Chinese Generalissimo in particular. In South China waters, on the night after Independence Day, wide-eyed captains of coastal steamers raced for Canton (see map, p. 17) with the news that scores of Japanese naval vessels were massed off Bias Bay, famed hideout of Chinese pirates, only 20 miles from the British Crown colony of Hong Kong.

In pitch dark, Japanese naval guns suddenly belched, rained shells on the feeble Chinese shore defenses, and the flotilla chugged into the Bay. Troops began landing at 4:30 a.m. The next morning and under a rain of fire, throughout the day some 40,000 Japanese, their horses, supplies and heavy guns, were ferried ashore where they split into two columns. One headed north for Waichow, whence a highway leads into Canton, and by week's end its artillery and bombers had the city in flames. The other struck westward to cut the rail line between Canton and Hong Kong. Beating off scattered Chinese resistance, it reached the line, blew up the tracks at a point only 15 miles north of Hong Kong.

Severance of this line cut the main artery over which munitions purchased by Chinese in Europe and shipped into Hong Kong have eventually reached Generalissimo Chiang--the 700-mile Canton-Hankow Railway. At week's end Japanese contingents landed on both sides of the Pearl River delta, one column slashing communications between Canton and Portuguese Macao on the coast, another striking on the east bank near Hong Kong. A Japanese War Office spokesman announced in Tokyo: "Japan is fixed in her determination to crush Chiang Kai-shek's regime; we do not intend to take Hong Kong or Singapore or advance southward in the Pacific; but we must and will carry out our program in China."

This was exactly the type of assurance Adolf Hitler has been giving with respect to Europe. Neville Chamberlain last week had the British Ambassador at Tokyo, Sir Robert Leslie Craigie, demand assurances from the Japanese government that British property in South China be respected.

In London it was presently announced that Sir Robert had received "most specific" assurances. It was also pointed out that the British investment stake in South China is a small fraction of what it is in other parts of China, notably in the Shanghai International Settlement, thus far respected by Japan.

All China watched breathlessly to see whether the Cantonese military leaders would resist Japan or waver in the allegiance which nearly all Chinese have shown to Chiang Kaishek, "The Great Unifier." His entourage last week put the blame on Neville Chamberlain, attributed the Japanese drive on Canton to collapse of British prestige at Munich and predicted that not only will the Cantonese fight but their resistance will so overextend Japan that it will cost her the war.

Cantonese form the majority of Chinese living abroad and these are sure to quicken their cash contributions of millions to the Generalissimo now that Canton is at stake. White correspondents in Tokyo flashed that the Japanese would have preferred a European war to the peace of Munich, since war would have completely tied British hands in the Far East. Tokyo was watching Joseph Stalin as well as Neville Chamberlain, and when the purge of the Soviet Far East Army officers got under way recently, Japan concluded she need not keep so many troops in North China and Manchukuo facing the Russians. It was mainly Japanese forces released from their "watch in the North" who drove into South China this week.

Meanwhile the two main prongs of Japan's drive in Central China on Hankow closed pincers-like. At Sinyang the Japanese blasted their way into the walled city and cut the only railway over which Russian supplies could reach Hankow. On the Yangtze River Japanese naval vessels poured shells on the fortified heights of Maoshan and Shihhweiyao, on opposite banks of the river and only 60 miles in a beeline from Hankow.

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