CHINA UNBEATEN

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 117, 20 May 1941, Page 9

CHINA UNBEATEN

FIGHT FOR LIBERTY

BACKGROUND TO WAR

ADDRESS BY DR. KOO

When Japan had failed to defeat China in the first year of the war the Chinese had realised that while they might not win they could not be beaten, Dr. T. Z. Koo told the Wellington Rotary Club today when he was guest speaker at the club's luncheon. China had been in the throes of national reconstruction when war broke out, and that reconstruction work had been continued during the past three years. The way it had been continued was one of the reasons why China could not be beaten. Discussing the background of events in the Far East, Dr. Koo said that the Chinese were a peaceful people, but for the past forty years China had been yielding again and again to Japan. In 1937 the Chinese decided that the time had come when no further yielding was possible. The keynote of Chinese life for the past' v fifty years had been national construction. China, with a history going back for thousands of years, had begun to realise that the old institutions had outlived their usefulness and must go if, China was to join the rest of the world. In his youth he had seen the people become gripped with the idea of "government of the people by the people for the people." The idea of national reconstruction had taken hold of the whole nation. Any people coming to China to help the change were welcomed, but those who tried to hinder it had to be resisted. That was why they, had decided to resist Japan. They were determined to retain their freedom to reconstruct China. CHINA'S STRENGTH. The real strength of the Chinese nation was to be found in the hearts of the people. In 1937, when the 1 Chinese armies were very ill equipped, j the thoughts of the people could best Ibe described by a question mark. They knew that the war was going to be the test of the unity of China, but they were not sure how the work of past years would- meet that test-. China had survived the first year of the war in a remarkable way, for Japan had command of the whole coast and her army outnumbered the Chinese soldiers by ten to one. When China withstood that onslaught the Chinese people gained faith in themselves. They might not win the war, but they were certain they would not lose it. Their country was like a feather pillow. Japan might punch it, but when the fist was removed the pillow was still there. China had the advantage of size, Dr. Koo said. "When we were defeated on the coast we went into the middle and said: 'You come here and we start all over again.'" At the start of the! war China had 1,500.000 soldiers, good, bad, and indifferent. At the end of three years 1,250,000 men had been killed, but there were 3,200,000 good men in the field. To beat China, Japan had to win in the first year; now she could not do so. Another strength of China was the development of guerrilla warfare, which had led to the exhaustion of the Japanese by unexpected assaults from all sides. The guerrillas had infiltrated into the occupied areas, and in some places the Japanese were only holding the towns and could not collect funds from the country. "Any Japanese agent who leaves the city to collect taxes, just doesn't come back, 3' he said. The Chinese Government was collecting taxes from 90 per cent, of the occupied territory, and the Japanese army no longer had the strength to advance, nor to retire gracefully. Right through the three years of warfare the Chinese nation had gone on building. The first five months of the war had destroyed half the Chinese educational system and that was felt more poignantly than the loss of a battle here and there, because the hall mark of a Chinese gentleman was education. A halt in the education system would have meant a gap in the ability of the leaders of the country, so they straightway rebuilt their colleges outside the occupied area, and' the students took their personal goods and walked across the country to them. That was the spirit of China and nothing could break it. Much of the visible national struc- j ture of China was shot away but the invisible base—that thing that had been given to China by forty centuries of culture—was still there and consequently China lived and would live on.