Feint & Thrust

After pushing a slow and bloody advance for three weeks in the area east of the Lwan River, Japanese troops along the Yellow Sea coast between the Great Wall and Tientsin were suddenly halted last week, faced about.

Russia seemed to be part of the answer. Disputes over broad-gauge rolling stock held at the Soviet end of the Chinese Eastern Railroad, thus crippling service, were growing daily more acute (TIME, April 24). On the other side of the line Soviet troops were reported massing in numbers to equal the Japanese. In both Tokyo and Moscow foreign correspondents hurried from department to department, came to the simultaneous conclusion that all this was largely shadowboxing. A Soviet railroad in Japanese territory is an anomaly. Soviet officials realize this and are willing to sell but want much more money than financially strapped Japan wants to pay. Troop movements, Japanese hectoring of Russian railwaymen. Soviet seizure of rolling stock are just so many stages of bargaining. Already the Manchukuo Ministry of Communications has renamed the C. E. R. the North Manchuria Railway.

Whether Russia was the cause or Japan was only feinting, Chinese troops hopped into armored trains and rushed up the coast after the withdrawing Japanese, reoccupying village after village. And before the coast troops' withdrawal could be interpreted as a grand Chinese victory, the Japanese right wing suddenly commenced a slashing inland attack on the Chinese troops of General Ho Ying-ching. 60 mi. from Peiping. The latter dug in against airplanes and siege guns and fought like alley cats. After an eight-day battle that cost China 4,600 admitted casualties, Japan occupied Nantienmen. For the first time Japanese officers admitted that Peiping might be the next objective, but insisted that no such advance would be made unless Chinese troops made a counterattack.

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