Dark Hour

The voice was that of Mme. Sun Yatsen. Tiny, spirited, inviolate, Mme. Sun lives in a three-story apartment house in Chungking, and emerges only rarely to make public statements. Last week, when she broke her silence, she voiced again the democratic conscience of China; once more she raised the dormant but still-vibrant national hopes of her late great husband, whose liberal program has been all but lost in the pressures of war under Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek.

The Generalissimo's people, combining a celebration of the Chinese New Year and the recent abolition of extraterritoriality, received from Mme. Sun a reminder of the Government's obligations. The future, said she, must follow three guiding posts: 1) China must become the economic, political, cultural and military equal of other nations; 2) the Chinese in occupied areas must be rescued and the Japanese must be driven from all Chinese soil; 3) a nationally elected People's Congress, the final stage of Dr. Sun Yatsen's three phases of national development (revolution, education, self-government), must be established and vested with the powers now closely held by the Kuomintang.

Chiang Kaishek, bearing the brunt of China's immense lacks and burdens, did not have to pay immediate attention to his revered sister-in-law's demands for internal reform. But her statement was also a reminder to the Western world that much more than military strategy is now involved in China.

Not Charity. On the verge of strangulation by blockade (TIME, Feb. 8), denied effective military aid by circumstances and neglect, China was in effect notifying the U.S. and Great Britain that the last hour for action had come. And China was using the facts of her desperate plight to pose some grave questions to Washington and London: Will China have to orient her policy with Moscow's alone, rather than with a real United Nations? Must China, in self-preservation, seek some way to end her own war before she is thrown to Japanese conquerors and Chinese puppets? Or can China emerge from the war, strong at last, a powerful member of really United Nations, a bulwark to peace and economic expansion in the postwar Pacific world?

These are the questions which Washington and London must weigh when they debate whether they can afford a serious campaign to reopen the Burma route to China--or, more immediately, whether they can find as many as 500 fighting planes to send to the China front. These are not questions to be answered by soldiers alone. China's questions can be answered only if the deep significance and the immediate dangers of China's plight are understood by the leaders of the U.S. and Great Britain.

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