North Canterbury Gazette FRIDAY, AUGUST 27, 1937 Japan Hurries

North Canterbury Gazette, Volume 7, Issue 32, 27 August 1937, Page 4

North Canterbury Gazette FRIDAY, AUGUST 27, 1937 Japan Hurries

So far the- Sino-Japanese war has been a clash of outposts. Thousands have been killed on both sides, but the real struggle has not yet begun. If twenty thousand people surging out of Lancaster Park gates were resisted and attacked by the twenty thousand who had already reached the street, that would be something like the struggle of China and Japan in and around Shanghai. It is a little different in the north, where there has been time to march, manoeuvre, and dig in, but in the Shanghai region the Japanese are trying frantically to get into a position to fight and the Chinese trying as frantically to prevent them. Ninety per cent, of the fighting strength of both sides is either immobilised by the narrowness of the front or hurrying on breathlessly but harmlessly where they can neither shoot nor be shot at. But there is this big difference —that time is with China and forever against Japan. If these opposing masses ever do meet J apan must win. China is neither united, armed, trained, nor fully aroused. It is doubtful if more than fifty per cent, of the Chinese people yet know that fighting has begun. If they have heard that Japan has attacked they will not know why, or clearly where. But every Japanese school-child will know about the "treachery” of the Chinese. Every J apanese workman and workwoman will know why it is necessary to work harder and to eat less, why their wages mean less rice and fewer clothes, why they must save something for the army and for' the Emperor, why so many troops are on the move, why the cities so often go black at night, why the police are so active politically, Communism is so foul a crime, why the war must be ended before winter. Although there are seven Chinese, somewhere, for every Japanese, it is doubtful if there are as many useful soldiers in the whole of China as Japan will pour into Shanghai within the next three months if the struggle still goes on. Unless the whole world has been received, China has as much chance of beating Japan in battle as a whale has of beating a chaser equipped with a harpoon gun. But if Japan cannot win quickly and decisively, if fighting drags on through winter and into winter again, if the Chinese resist long enough for the Spanish war to end, for the Russians to stop shooting one another, and for the Arab lion to lie down with the Jewish lamb, there may be an active revival among Japanese war-lords of the ancient rite of harakiri.