NOTES ON THE WAR

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 58, 6 September 1943, Page 3

NOTES ON THE WAR

CHINA AND JAPAN

AN AMERICAN COMMENT

The Allied invasion of Italy and the Red Army's advance in Russia are proceeding "according to plan," without any spectacular events to record at the weekend. Air warfare continues everywhere strongly in favour of the Allies.

In the war against Japan China has played and must play a decisive' role. The Chinese have kept considerable Japanese forces pinned down in China for several years, and China is the only convenient base—Siberia ruled out— for air and land attack, across narrow seas, on Japan itself. But before anything big can be done, China must be brought in direct and practicable contact with the main Allied base in the East—lndia. It'is too much just now to expect China to do the job herself. On July 20 the "New York Times" published a Hanson Baldwin article reviewing the actual situation in China somewhat unfavourably it seemed from the cabled extracts, which appeared in "The Post" on July 21 and drew comment from a correspondent in a later issue. ' The full text of Mr. Baldwin's article is now available. • The main point made is that, unlike the Germans in their attempt to push deeply into Russia, the Japanese have never sought unlimited victories in China. They have used China, as the writer of these notes has always contended, as a means to an. end, not an end in itself, as a stepping stone, supply base, and training ground for their more ambitious plans of Pacific conquest. In that limited objective in China they have, according to Mr. Baldwin, succeeded. They have been strengthened, not weakened, by the events of the last two years, and have, by cutting off all practical communications, such as the Burma Road, established a' blockade and economic stranglehold of China, that is, Free China. Invaluable Service. Mr. Baldwin then goes on to say: "Although the Chinese army and the Chinese air force are weak, when weighed in the scales of global war, the will of free China to resist, symbolised by one man —Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek—is still a major determinant in the affair of the Orient. "Regardless of which side wins or loses the intermittent skirmishes and battles in China the Chinese spirit of resistance still forces Japan to utilise perhaps one-fourth of her land army to hold down occupied China. Like wary but non-combatant Russia to the north, watched carefully by more than half a million Japanese in Manchuria, China is thus accomplishing an invaluable service to the cause of the United Nations, in that she is absorbing a considerable element of the enemy's ground strength and, as our own air forces are built up in China, an-increasing part of his air strength. 'But it would be a mistake to magnify this contribution, to misinterpret the success of the Chinese spirit as.the success of Chinese arms or to count upon China delivering a knock-out blow to the enemy. For the difficulties inherent in supplying China, are so great, the Chinese armies require so much training, and are sq deficient in leadership that we can never count upon breaking Japan through China alone. "China will play an essential and imperative role in the final defeat of the Pacific enemy, but the main burden of victory in the Pacific will be ours, and the attack must be pressed home, and not from China alone, but from India, Australia, the Solomons, Hawaii, Alaska, and the Aleutians—and perhaps some day from Siberia." In the light of the decisions of the Quebec Conference, so far as they have been divulged, to intensify and coordinate operations against Japan, Mr. Baldwin's conclusions bear the stamp of realism. If China is to play her proper role, she must be helped, and that without further delays.