JOY AND MISGIVINGS IN CHINA,

Evening Star, Issue 25563, 15 August 1945, Page 4

JOY AND MISGIVINGS IN CHINA,

To no country. in the world will the end of the war come with a sense of greater relief than to the 400 millions of China.* The struggle that has lasted for six years for those-to whom the first threat came from Germany lias been for her one of eight .years. The first shocks that she endured were as irresistible as any that were suffered in the Western conflict. For four years, which saw the collapse of her chief cities, the horrors of destruction from the air, the long trek to Chungking, and the organisation of a new defence whose main buttress was remoteness, she stood alone. There was a tragic time when the British had to close even the Burma (Road, by which a thin trickle of supplies could reach her, for fear lest they should have Japan as an enemy before their second breath was gained in the desperate early days of the war with Germany. There was the heroic transference of industries and of educational facilities, and, after the Allies entered the Eastern war with promise of assistance, the shock of their first reverses and acceptance, during weary years, of the policy that in all things, so far as they were concerned, the demands of the Western war must come first. That policy was essential to the Allies’ strategy, hut it. was heartbreaking to China. There was never a moment, however, when tho Chinese thought of yielding, and now their war has been won.

One thing only disturbs the relief, and. it is to be hoped that it will not disturb it long. With all the qualities that Chiang Kai-shek has shown he has never been able to win .the goodwill of the Chinese ' Communists, against whom he was fighting before the war,. and who early established a Government of their own on the northwest borders of China. Outside critics asked why Chiang did not agree with fhis Communists. It was replied that no ruling head could ever agree to a State within the State. The Communists said that Chiang was not democratic. There is no democracy in Communism, but it has been questioned how far the Field-Marshal’s _ Chinese opponents are Communists in more than name. Every statement ever made about them, or on their behalf, has been questioned or contradicted. Chiang’s regime was not democratic; that was impossible, under war conditions, but before the war he had promised to call a representative assembly, for November 12, 1937—Sun Yat-sen’s birthday—to devise a Constitution, and he has promised it again for next November. Yet Communists and Nationalists remain at sharp issue. Chiang objects to Japanese, when they capitulate, turning their arms over to his former foes rather than to his forces. Communists reply that they have • always taken these -when they have defeated Japanese, to which the reply used to be made that all / the fighting , done _by them against the Japanese, since the very early days at least, was harmless. While the National Chinese front shifted over' half of China and in places back again, the front of the Communists has been stationary. Their claim is made now to he represented as a special entity in the Peace Conference, which is making a large demand. At the same time their leader, Mao Tse-tung, seems in the past to liave renounced any claim to more than local self-government for their movement. Both leaders, it has been said, are honest men and sincere patriots. Their differences should be composed. *