"War Lords Drunk"

Of China's 4,480,992 square miles, Japanese forces held:

This week: 625,272

Week ago: 616,750

Month ago: 600,000

Year ago: 500,000

Japan's new strategy of trying to nip off Shanghai and the tip of the Shanghai Peninsula by means of pincer armies closing in from North and South (TIME, Nov. 15), succeeded last week in relentless, smashing style. Long-eared Japanese Commander-in-Chief General Iwane Matsui helped his infantry pincers close by turning loose Japan's most potent naval and land artillery, hurled great projectiles screaming clear over the International Settlement to score hits on Chinese positions at as much as 7,500 yards (about four miles).

It turned out that Shanghai's three leading Chinese newspapers had decided the city was going to fall as much as two weeks ago, had removed their staffs and much equipment 700 miles down the Yangtze River to Hankow, where they came out with extras last week as some 12,000 Chinese troops were being asked to make a "last stand" just outside Shanghai's French Concession. The French hastily dug trenches and strung barbed wire, exchanging shouted comments with the Chinese soldiers many of whom were for frenzied resistance while others cursed "the useless sacrifice our Government is making of us."

As Japanese shelling and bombing increased, Chinese soldiers began stripping off their uniforms, some hurling their naked bodies against the French barbed wire to secure gashes and wounds, understood to be essential for admission to safety in the French Concession. Elsewhere on the Shanghai front Chinese retreated in good order, setting fire to the enormous Japanese-owned Toyoda cotton mills and popping a few Chinese shells into a $1,000,000 U. S.-owned match factory.

Just inside the neutral Settlement, atop an exposed tower, the London Daily Telegraph's, ace Correspondent Philip Pembroke Stephens, who recently flew from London to Hong Kong to cover the war, watched the capture of Shanghai with seven other whites. In the ensuing lull some 20 minutes later a U. S. patrol saw blood dripping from the tower, climbed up to find Pembroke Stephens lying dead amid six crouching survivors so terrified that at first they could not believe the fighting was over and the city quiet at last after 89 days' siege. Japanese machine gun bullets had slain Correspondent Stephens. The Japanese command soon said these had been fired at Chinese (an impossibility, considering the terrain), heaved Japanese sighs at "the passing of this distinguished British journalist."

Long-eared General Matsui, victorious, was asked by correspondents if he would now attempt to press Japan's advance to capture the Chinese capital of Premier & Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek, famed Nanking, some 200 miles up the Yangtze River from Shanghai. Said General Matsui softly: "You had better ask Chiang Kai-shek about future developments. Chiang is reported to have predicted a five-year war. Well, it might last that long. We do not know whether to go on to Nanking or not. It depends on Chiang."

Meanwhile Mme Chiang, in her daily column to the U. S. press, radioed from Nanking: "Tokyo's acclamation of Matsui as a hero on Chinese soil has gone to his head . . . strongest wine of militaristic adulation . . . Japanese war lords drunk with their hollow success at Shanghai . . . power lust."

The second great Japanese victory of the week was in North China. There Lieut. General Seishiro Itagaki's advance (TIME, Nov. 15) overwhelmed the besieged provincial stronghold of Taiyuan and at least 1,000 of its Chinese defenders were slain as Japanese stormed and breached through the walls.

In wars between China and Japan in the past,* a point has generally been reached when the morale of the less well-armed Chinese soldiery gave way and the Chinese Government sued for peace on the best terms it could get. The heavy reverses China has now suffered on all fronts, neutral Shanghai observers balanced this week against the fact that Japan has taken three times as long as she originally scheduled to capture Shanghai, the fact that in the four months of this war Japan has now spent as much as she spent on the whole Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05 which lasted 18 months.

*There have been four.

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