The Auckland Star WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 1938. JAPANESE VICTORIES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 253, 26 October 1938, Page 10

The Auckland Star WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 1938. JAPANESE VICTORIES.

For the cause that lack» assistance, f or the iiro)itf that nerds resistance, For the future in the distance. And the good that ice can do. '

Lasf week tlie Japanese took Canton; to day tlicv arc in Hankow. The magnitude and mpiuity of their military successes recall the later stages of the war in Abyssinia, where the Italians confounded all predictions and in a few weeks brought the campaign to a victorious close. It may be that the recent Japanese victories mark the beginning of the end of serious resistance by the Chinese, and that soon we shall learn ot Chiang Kai-shek in flight and new provincial (iovernments being set up and recognised by Japan. The Japanese have sworn to destroy the "Central" Government, and to carry on the war until it. is destroyed. The Government has declared its determination to go on fighting; but ils ability to do so becomes increasingly doubtful. Can the Chinese will to resist be maintained in the face of repeated Japanese successes and the steady impoverishment of a country already poor? Chiang Kai-shek has yet to prove himself equal to such a desperate problem in leadership.

And what of the Japanese T Their forces, already extended throughout the length of China, are pushing on inland. Like the Italians in Abyssinia, they have lotind il i fit cult ies of transport and communication greater enemies than their human opponents; but they are overcoming those difficulties. It is believed that when the war began they did not imagine it would become so extensive; it' so, they have treated its extension merely as a challenge to them to make a greater effort, and that effort they have successfully made. The question of their real aims remains uncertain, possibly because those aims have changed as the campaign has gone on. Their immediate aims, it is believed, are jMilitical and strategical rather than economic. It" "war should occur between Japan and Russia, a China dominated by an anti-Japanese Government would be a source of peril to Japan. If that Government is destroyed, they believe, Russia will not venture on an aggressive policy in the Far East. But the question of whether the " Central " Government can be finally destroyed, or whether, aided by the Japanese invasion, it has not so aroused the national spirit of the people that they will never submit to Japanese domination is one that only time can answer.