New Offensive

General Wang Yao-wu, governor of Shantung, had more than the Reds to worry about. A fortnight ago he fired a proclamation: no more marriages for his troops.

The general's chief targets were women refugees in his beleagured capital city of Tsinan who were "choosing marriage as their way out." Men with families, he noted, had little fighting spirit. Worst of all, proclaimed the general, "The Reds have been sending girl spies over, utilizing carnal looks to lure military and government officials into matrimony, in order to obtain military information and endanger lives."

General Wang had considerable supporting evidence. U.S. flyers who transported Nationalist troops from the interior to the coast (after V-J day) frequently discovered soldiers' wives and concubines disguised in army uniforms. Some Chinese even blamed the disaster of Shihchiachuang last year on the women. A Nationalist army, moving north from that strategic city, was so encumbered by carts bearing wives and household possessions that it blundered into a Communist ambush, was destroyed in a three-day fight. A week later, undermanned Shihchiachuang fell, the greatest single government loss of 1947.

Chinese women were taking the blast in their dainty stride. Some even openly agreed. Said a pretty 23-year-old whose fiance had deserted the army to marry her--then was unable to find a job that would support them both: "If there's fighting to do, the soldiers had better not get married. Half their hearts would be in the family, and only half in the fight." But the prim young wife of a Shanghai bank clerk spoke sharply for the rest: "Whenever men get into trouble, they blame women."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.