Calamity

Anxiety lay dark and heavy over restless Chungking: what seemed at first a minor foraging raid by the Japs had grown to a major offensive and a staggering calamity for weary China. Chungking admitted that the enemy had:

P:Seized almost all of the roadbed which in a few months would link Tokyo by rail and ferry with Hankow in middle China;

P:Crossed the Yellow River, deep in China's rear defense lines, in the face of excellent fortifications;

P:Cut off "several hundred thousands" of Chinese troops.

To make these gains, Japan used a small force--probably no more than 50,000 men. But fleets of trucks, mobile cannon, some 600 whippet tanks and armored cars gave this army its winning asset: mobility on the vast Honan plain (in three weeks the Japanese covered some 300 miles).

Wiry, honor-hungry General Shunroku Hata had used this and other assets, like superior firepower, with seeming skill and a full appreciation of the weakness of his foe. He split his forces into small columns (the two which crossed the Yellow River numbered only 5,000 men), sent them streaking across Honan's ripening wheat fields. Once his wedges had pierced the outer defense belts, he sent them into mushroom patterns. Result: encirclement of Chinese front-line troops. The advance went on.

Tragedy's Lessons. Defeat in Honan bore lessons: wars cannot be fought without weapons; a long stalemate poisons an army's morale and strength. Honan's defenders were ill-armed, lulled into apathy by six years of relative inaction.

When the blow fell, the Chinese were as rusty as their scanty ammunition. In the years of stalemate no adequate defenses had been built, no preparations made to launch a guerrilla campaign in the enemy's rear, once he began his big push. Some Chinese troops--notably those of plucky little General T'ang En-po--were better than others; but none fared well.

As great as the Army's tragedy was that of Honan's tall, patient peasants. After years of famine, this year's crop was rich and fat, all but ready for the harvest. Just before the Japanese struck, plans had been completed to move 1,000,000 Ib. of poison spray into Honan to check the inroads of locusts. Now the plans lost meaning: what the locust spares, the Japanese will take.

Far to the south, another Chinese army, in a surprise move, crossed the milewide, emerald-green Salween on a 130-mile front and lunged west this week toward General Joseph Stilwell's India-based troops, now slowly advancing across north Burma.

Unlike the army of Honan, this "was a first-rate fighting force,'partly equipped with U.S. howitzers and mortars, partly led by U.S.-trained officers, commanded by the seasoned veteran, General Wei Li-huang, whom his men call "100-victory Wei." Effective air support came from Major General Claire Chennault's Fourteenth Air Force.

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