Trouble For Japanese Garrisons

Manawatu Times, Volume 63, Issue 39, 16 February 1938, Page 5

Trouble For Japanese Garrisons

Chinese Organising Many Guerilla Bands ARMS FACTORIES BEHIND LINES United Press Association—-By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright. Received Tuesday, 7 p.m. LONDON, Feb. 15. The Daily Herald's Shanghai correspondent reports that the Chinese cn gaged in guerilla warfare behind the Japanese lines exceed 200,000, Japan's occupation of the areas in north and central China being confined to garrisons in big cities and on the connecting railways and motor roads. The Chinese havo largely extended their manoeuvring tactics, preventing the Japanese consolidating their gains, the principal mobile force being the Eighth Route Army, of 100,000 men, with headquarters at Wutaishan, northeastern .Shansi, far in the Japanese rear. They are reoccupying 36 counties in north Shansi and Hopei and re-estab-lishing a Chinese administration up to the gates of Poking. Guerilla bands have established small arms factories within the territory occupied by the Japanese, to which they smuggle raw material from Tientsin. Recruits exceed 30,000. The Eighth Route Army's losses are computed at one-third of the original force. In addition, it has mobilised hundreds of guerilla bands, whose members are given anti-Japanese training and their rents and taxes reduced. The aim is to increase the forces to 2,000,000. Men under General Hanving are raiding the Japanese lines daily, construct ing bases in the mountainous hinterland and mobilising the peasantry in Kiangsi. JAPANESE SWOOP ON VITAL RAILWAY TANKS PREPARE WAY FOR INFANTRY SHANGHAI, Feb. 14. In an advance from the north to the Lunghai railway, covering 30 miles in two days, the Japanese occupied the walled city of Chihsien on the PeipingHankow railway and are now sweeping on to Weihwei, 15 miles from the vital junction of Sinsiang. Tanks played a deadly part in the advance, enabling infantry to follow up with fierce hand-to-hand fighting in which the Chineselost 2000 killed. Simultaneously the army from South Hopei captured Changyuan, 30 miles from Kaifeng, another vital point on the Lunghai railway. The Lunghai railway runs east and west across the centre of China. It is intersected in the west by the PeipingHankow railway and in the east by the Tientsin-Pukow line, both of which run roughly parallel to the coast in a north* south direction. Command of the junctions would be of immense strategic value to the Japanese. Fighting has been proceeding in the vicinity of the Lunghai railway for some weeks past. The boom across the Pearl river at Canton will be opened to-morrow to enable bottled-up ships to leave for Hongkong. % BOYCOTT OP JAPAN EFFORT IN LONDON « l LONDON, Feb. 14. Following up the resolution passed at the International Peace Conference expressing general approval of an “aid to China week," an embargo on exports and credits to Japan, and nonrecognition of puppet Governments or a settlement violating China's territorial integrity or sovereign rights, Lord Cecil and others are planning a ballot in which voluntary helpers will distribute tickets bearing the question: “Will you join the anti-Japanese boycott!" Mr. P. J. Noel-Baker, the LabouT M.P., is seeking applicants who are willing to undertake poster parade work. CHINESE CASUALTIES IN CHANGTEH BATTLE 10,000 KILLED IN FIVE DAYS PEKING, Feb. 14. Success still attends the Japanese offensive near Changteh, which, however, only second-class troops oppose. The Japanese claim to have killed 10,000 Chinese in five days' fighting in the Changteh area. The Chinese have abandoned their belief in Russian help, on which many depended at the outbreak of hostilities, but they stiil hope against hope for Anglo-American intervention. DEMAND FOR RELEASE OF MISSIONARY’S BODY CAPTURE BY BANDITS SHANGHAI, Feb. 14. The French authorities are negotiating for the release at Mukdeu of the body of an American missionary, Father Donovan, who was brought in fYom Fushun. Doctors believe that he was strangled. Obviously he had been tortured. Bandits kidnapped him on October 5 during worship, and sent back a fellow-captive, an altar boy, with a demand for a ransom of 50,000 dollars. ANTI-EPIDEMIC ASSISTANCE LEAGUE GROUP IN CHINA (British Official Wireless.) Received Tuesday, 7 p.m. RUGBY, Feb. 14. Mr. Anthony Eden informed the House of Commons that the Englishspeaking group appointed under the League of Nations to plan anti-epi-demic assistance for China was already iu China.