The Bear's Paw

For five long years rumors of China's imminent collapse have been thick as tea leaves on the bottom of a drained teapot. Last week they were thicker than ever. China's ragged army of rifleman and grenade-throwers had fought a critical campaign under appalling hardships (see WORLD BATTLEFRONTS). Washington gossips croaked the news that Vice President Henry Wallace brought Franklin Roosevelt from Chungking: China's situation is grave, even desperate. And last week neutral Russia, breaking its long reticence about the Sino-Japanese war, treated its exhausted neighbor to a stroke of the bear's paw.

Moscow's unofficial but influential War and the Working Class drew a jarring picture of China's disintegration, put most of the blame on Chiang Kai-shek's Government.

Asked the Moscow magazine:

"What is the explanation for the military success of the Japs in China, which was achieved despite the fact that Japan's general military and international situation is worse, while the international situation has changed favorably for China?" Answer: the "doubled-edged methods of political war whereby the Japanese plan to conquer China with the hands of the Chinese."

Through their puppet, Wang Ching-wei, the Japanese still hope to make a separate peace with some group within the Chungking Government. "They hope to split China away from union with America and England, and, as they say, 'to return China into the bosom of East Asia.' They try to buy defeatists, capitulationists and appeasers, acting under the guise of promising the 'independence and sovereignty of China.' They seek indefatigably to sharpen China's inner discord and arouse civil war."

Democratic Talk. For China's inner discord, War and the Working Class blamed not the Chinese Communists but Chiang Kaishek. "For years a great part of Chiang's best troops, headed by the most experienced generals and officers, have been 'guarding' China from the 'Communists' . . . who are waging a continuous, active, partisan war against the greater portion of the combined Japanese and puppet Chinese troops."

Chiang was urged to look to Communist Marshal Tito for a model. "The Army of Marshal Tito has 300,000 while Chiang's has 3,000,000. Nevertheless, the success of the Yugoslav Army is obvious, which cannot be said at the present time for the National Government of China. This is explained by the powerful unity of the Yugoslav peoples." China's unity, said War and the Working Class, "can be achieved only on the base of democracy."

Democratic Action. As if in answer to this challenge, the Chungking Government last week took a big democratic step. On recommendation of President Chiang Kaishek, it approved a habeas corpus act. Thus, for the first time in their history, the Chinese people (unlike the Russian people) were guaranteed against imprisonment without trial.

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