THE WAR IN CHINA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21640, 10 May 1932, Page 5

THE WAR IN CHINA

TRAGIC OCCURRENCES TERRIBLE PLIGHT OF PEOPLE. A friend in Shanghai sends to a Dunedin resident the following interesting letter from Shanghai, under date February 29 last: — " War, grim and deadly, has been going on since my arrival here 15 days ago! I left Korea on the 9th, and took my son to school and then came down here, where Japan is whipping China with a cruel precision, while onlookers are amazed at the amount of punishment she can take. But Japan cannot get in a knock-out blow, and the nations want to give a decision on points. Whether this can be done or not remains to be seen. My first acquaintance with the real thing was when coming into the Whangpoo on the 14th Japanese cruisers and a planecarrier were anchored-off the mouth. On ahead were the Wu Sung forts. This powerful killing factory was in ruins, and so was the town of the same name. Behind us was a Jap transport. It seemed as if we were to pass without any experience of a warlike nature. But soon busi-ness-like cruisers were seen gliding down, and as they passed the town and forts let go deafening broadsides. As they were busy above and below us, the concussion was overwhelming, and blood began to pour from my nose. Really, you could not imagine anything more appalling! The Chinese had both machine guns and rifles ready, but were not in the humour to let them off and reveal their positions. Later on, a taxi took me to the China Inland Mission. If there were snipers, no one took a shot at me, but at all the important crossroads were savage barricades devilishly decorated with barbed wire. From the time I arrived at the mission on the hill up to the present big guns have been crashing day and night. Rifle and machine-guns, too, have been doing their deadly duty, and great conflagrations have been blazing fire and belching smoke into the starry dome of the cold, clear heavens. Aeroplanes—at times seven or more—have been seen circling over the battle grounds and often heard when not visible to the eye. They have been bombing over wide areas, and their power to devastate is enormous. Of course, the destruction of lives and property is mounting up to billions in money, and the foreign settlements and French concession are packed with homeless, penniless refugees. The Chinese imagine they are winning, but the Japs are simply out to punish China in the heart of her citadel, and the pitiful Lord knows she is doing it like a slow-moving, crunching machine. Our premises—five storeys high —have flat roofs and we can not only hear the tumult but watch the aeroplanes and the bursting shells. At night the awful fires truly suggest the judgment of the Old Testament times. Strangely enough, even when the boom of battle in the night was ultra terrific, I have slept all through it, and am even now not conscious of any strain. Poor old China has been playing with fire and was working for a whipping, but Japan has been too ruthless! If the punishment was falling on the cowardly students one could consider it grim comedy, but it is pitiless tragedy because the sufferers are the farmers and small traders, who are too busy with their own affairs to be the enemy of anyone. But what is the cause of all the deadly strife? The main portion of the blame must be put on China. She has had too high an opinion of herself and p for years lias been treating foreign nations without regard to treaty obligations. She has, also; sadly misjudged the spirit of Western nations, and, above all, has not been able since the Republic to. form a Government capable of ruling all China. She has used banditry to cover sins of officialdom, and has deliberately fostered international illwill in her schools and specialised in in-, suiting Japan and England. She also imagined the boycott was a deadly weapon to be used with impunity. The Manchurian affair was the culmination of hundreds of incidents and a permanently hostile spirit, and when Japan began to act she replied with a boycott which was a covert declaration of war. An effort on Japan’s part to stop this nonsense was the immediate cause of the Shanghai hostilities and the withering results. So far no bad news has come from the Inland Mission stations, and it seems that the officials are above reproach. My wife is (as far as we know) all right, and I am leaving for the west in a few days, ft must be remembered that the foreign sections here have suffered very little —that is, the international settlement and the French concession. The latter is .directly under France, but the “ international is not under England., The zone affected by the present hostilities is the Greater Shanghai, and is directly under China. Both the composition of Shanghai and its Government are rarely correctly understood out of China, or even in China.”