Leng Pass

Though the world was loudly promised that Japan's invasion of Jehol would stop at the Great Wall of China, Japanese troops found themselves occupying about 1,000 sq. mi. of Chinese territory inside the Wall last week, firing at fleeing Chinese only 100 mi. from Tientsin. Heaviest fighting took place at Leng Pass 50 miles inland from Shanhaikwan. Because Japanese citizens and taxpayers were grimly considering the first official casualty lists of the Jehol campaign (1,479 Japanese soldiers killed, 3,468 wounded), Japanese staff officers moved more prudently. Fifty field guns and 30 military planes pounded the ill-equipped Chinese lines before infantry went into the pass with the bayonet.

Chinese patriots, burning in the safe distance of Shanghai, received comforting news. General Tsai Ting-kai, commander of China's able 19th Route Army, hero of last year's Battle of Shanghai, announced that he was moving 8,000 of his best men to northern Kwantung province where they would join other Cantonese and Southern troops and advance against the Japanese. Foreign correspondents expected this move to be more effective in blasting the prestige of Nationalist Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek than in driving Japan from Jehol.

Boxer Balance. The same ship that carried discountenanced Warlord Chang Hsueh-liang and his 17 "secretaries" from Shanghai last week also bore Benito Mussolini's son-in-law, Count Galeazzo Ciano, Italian Minister to China, going home for a vacation. Earlier in the week he had put the finishing touches to a deal started some months ago when Chiang Kai-shek's brother-in-law H. H. Kung visited Rome. Still owing the Italian Government is a balance of $2,000,000 in gold from the Boxer indemnity squeezed from the old Empress Dowager in 1901. It was agreed last week that this balance should be devoted to buying Italian war planes for use against Japan, a business that had become practically a U. S. monopoly. First shipment of 20 fighting planes was already en route to China last week. As a special premium with the deal, three Italian instructors took up their duties at the aviation school at Hangchow, and the famed Italian racing pilot Mario Bernardi accepted a commission as chief of the Chinese nationalist air force.

Rolling Stock. Russo-Japanese relations, quiet for a year, suddenly snapped taut last week at an angry squawk from the government of Manchukuo. While thousands of Soviet troops have moved quietly into line along the Manchukuan border, railway officials at the Russian end of the Chinese Eastern Railway have been quietly detaining rolling stock of the C. E. R., rerouting them over Russian tracks. Manchukuo officials woke to the fact last week that the Soviet had "borrowed" 3,200 freight cars, 190 passenger cars, 83 locomotives. The system was paralyzed, for the C. E. R. is built on Russian broad gauge, all other Manchurian rolling stock is built to U. S. standard gauge.

An official sedative was issued from Tokyo: "We do not believe that there will be serious eventualities."

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