Something for China?

As Mme. Chiang Kai-shek delicately drew attention to her weary country last week (see p. 23), the Chinese war reappeared in the news.

Jap advances on fronts scattered from northern Kiangsu to the Salween River on the Burma border might be the prelude to the final campaign to knock exhausted China out of the war. Indeed a Tokyo broadcast threatened just that.

But Chungking was only mildly disturbed. Tokyo has often made the boast before. Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek occupied himself on Chungking's South Bank, correcting the proofs of his new book. Chungking spokesmen declined to tremble.

It was just possible that the tired Chinese viewed the Japanese activity with less alarm than did Allied strategists. Allied calculations are based on China's holding out indefinitely, or at least until the U.S. and Britain can get around to helping her. And there were signs that something for China was cooking on the back of the Roosevelt-Churchill stove.

Fortnight ago General H. H. Arnold and Britain's Field Marshal Sir John Dill held secret conference with Chungking officials, flew to New Delhi with China's General Ho Ying-chin. Announcing the Chungking conference, the War Department had said: "The fullest possible coordination [of British and U.S. efforts in Asia] will be assured by subsequent conferences between General MacArthur and General Wavell." Last week Washington announced that General Walter Krueger had arrived in Australia to take command of a newly activated Sixth Army. But the only practical route to China is through Burma. There Wavell's campaign to end Japanese occupation is still on a miniature scale, making almost imperceptible progress.

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