“BACKS TO THE WALL”

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 4348, 18 January 1938, Page 7

“BACKS TO THE WALL”

CHINA FACES HER CRISIS AS A UNITED NATION GRIM DETERMINATION SHOWN One of the most significant aspects of the present crisis in China is the way in which the ordinary Chinese citizen has accepted the idea that his country’s fate is in the balance and that sacrifices must be made by all. Foreign and Chinese observers alike have been struck by the uncomplaining way ui which people whose homes and business have been destroyed are adapting themselves to desperately difficult situations. While more than one foreign business man has been heard to reproach the Nanking Government for having plunged Shanghai into hostilities, there seems to be no evidence of any such feeling on the part of the Shanghai Chinese (writes the Shanghai correspondent of the ‘ Manchester Guardian ’). Yet the Chinese people, not only in Shanghai, but throughout the country, have been affected by the war to an unprecedented degree. A large section of the industrial population has been thrown out of employment, many farmers have been prevented either from planting or from harvesting their crops, thousands of business men have been ruined, officials, teachers, and the like have suddenly been deprived of their livelihood. From Nanking, Shanghai, Soochow, and other cities 'in the Lower Yangtse region hundreds of thousands of people, high and low, rich and poor, have returned to live with their families in the interior, carrying with them the news that Japan is making open war upon China.

MILLIONS UPROOTED.

Seldom before in China’s history can there have been anything like the dislocation of population which the present hostilities have caused. Millions of people have been uprooted. The future effect of these vast movements is difficult to foretell, but it is bound to be very considerable. In the first place, ordinary Chinese men and women have become aware as never before of a national emergency and its cause. Those who have had to move and those among whom they come are developing certain attitudes toward Japan which it takes little imagination to understand. Secondly, national unity is being extended and deepened by the common bond of suffering. In the third place, intellectual leaders are now going far inland as universities are transferred from the coastal towns to safer localities, and that may mean much both to them and to those among whom they take up their abode, perhaps for an extended period. The process of modernisation is bound to be hastened, especially in Central and Western China.

Meanwhile, however, many refugees and those they leave behind are going to be homeless or unemployed, and, it is to be feared, will provide first-class material for banditry unless some com-., prehensive scheme of work relief or land settlement is worked out. Some attempt is being made to move Chinese industrial plants inland, but this cannot be done fast enough to prevent tremendous destruction at the hands of the Japanese. The economic situation will be further aggravated if markets are disorganised and farmers plant less at a time when actually they should be planting more in view of the fact that imported foodstuffs cannot be .migiit in. Foreign observers feel that there is a real danger of famine ahead, and that existing stocks of foodstuffs will need to be carefully conserved and distributed. This situation is being faced by the Chinese as a whole in a way which is tremendously impressive. “ I have never seen such grim determination among the Chinese people,” one veteran British missionary told me the other day. It is quite evident that they have their backs to the wall. People are calm, not emotional or loud-mouthed. I do not recall any noisy demonstrations. The younger folk have been singing patriotic Chinese songs, and martial music comes over the radio. But the sense of what they are up against has been very sobering. Among refugees the spirit of patience and fortitude is amazing. Otherwise the International Settlement here in Shanghai would have been in an uproar by now. Evacuation of foreigners from Shanghai seems to have been urged by the British and American authorities in the fear of some Chinese uprising oi of an attempt to murder us all. The self-control and discipline of Chinese soldiers and civilians alike has made that fear seem rather foolish. Remarkable, too, has been the spirit of mutual helpfulness. While it is true that wealthy Chinese citizens have not always responded with alacrity to appeals for monetary assistance, Chinese public organisations of all kinds have given unstinting]}’ of money and service. In many cases Chinese doctors and nurses have been giving their services free. Teachers are carrying on their schools for half their salary or no salary at all. When bombs were dropped 'in one of the Shanghai International Settlement’s most crowded thoroughfares rickshaw coolies brought in wounded victims to the hospitals and went off, it is said, without raising any question of payment—even though their blood-soaked rickshaws were put temporarily out of commission. YOUTH VOLUNTEERS. Boy Scouts in their teens have been hj Iping in hospital and refugee work, actually assisting in the evacuation of wounded from near the front line and in the gruesome but essential work of corpse disposal. After more than two I months of it these youngsters are carrying on with an enthusiasm which shows no°sign of flagging. Chinese girls have not been behind hand. Recently I visited an emergency Red Cross hospital established in a Chinese dance hall to care for some 200 wounded soldiers and civilians, including one four-year- ] old youngster wounded in the stomach 1 and leg who lay in bed with his injured I father” Among the volunteer nurses attending to the patients were about a dozen young Chinese girls, forme! 1} attached ’to the establishment as taxi dancers ” who were putting in 14 hours a day, receiving only their food .in return. Deprived of their employ-

ment by the closing down of the cotton mills, working girls also have been indefatigable in helping with work among the refugees. Some of these young women have even volunteered for ambulance work at the front. SPIRIT OF CIVILIANS. Such instances could be multiplied indefinitely. They go to show that there is now abroad in China the kind of spirit which was to be found amongst British civilians durng the world war. Whether this determination can be kept up as the present hostilities extend into 1938 remains to be proved, but there is no doubt that at present the Chinese people generally are backing their Government to the limit. The pity of it is that this fact, so patent to the neutral observer, seems to be hidden from the Japanese leaders, who, incredibly blind to the political developments of the past few years, persist in imagining that the Chinese Government can be considered as something apart from the Chinese people. Ten 'years ago that might have been true,' but it is no longer the case. Since the establishment of the Nanking Government in 1928 a cohesiie process has been laboriously under way, and, while personal ambition and private feud have not been entirely eliminated, a point has been reached where the Nanking Government symbolises to most of the Chinese people—or at least to the articulate section of them—their hopes for the future. They do not think it is a perfect Government by any means, and most of them are ready enough to criticise sharply its manifest shortcomings. But it is their Government and they are going to stand behind it at this time of crisis. If any further stimulus to unity had been required it would have been provided by the apparently indiscriminate use of Japanese aeroplanes against totally defenceless civilians in different parts of the country and by the wanton destruction of Chinese educational and cultural institutions. It is to be feared that, short of outside intervention. there can be no end to the matter until the Japanese come to realise that they are making war not, as they mofess. upon a coterie of militarists at Nanking, but upon a whole people whose unexampled forbearance has been taxed to the limit and who are determined to see things through, no matter what the cost.