"JAPANESE" MARSHAL

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 110, 5 November 1937, Page 5

"JAPANESE" MARSHAL

According to the Japanese both the principal actors in the Sino-Japanese drama are Japanese. So impressed have they been with the integrity and the military and political ability of Marshal Chiang Kai-shek that they have concluded he must be Japanese. They have accordingly endowed him with a Japanese ancestry. His forebears, they say, were wrecked on the Chinese coast some time during the last century while pursuing the honourable profession of Japanese pirates. Whatever his ancestry, the Japanese have in the Marshal an opponent worthy of their steel. The Marshal foresaw the present conflict years ago. He also! foresaw the blockading of the ports by the Japanese.. To counter this he has made all preparations for a Fabian retreat into the interior in case of need. To make his Government independent of seaborne supplies he has spent the last two years feverishly building roads' towards the Indo-Chinese and Outer Mongolian frontiers. An Englishman who has travelled on these roads declares them to be excellent for that part of the world. • It is even possible, he says, to travel at 35 miles an hour on them without getting'car sickness from the jolts. ■' ;