Victory, Bomb, Invasion

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

This week 639,272

Week Ago: 635,322

Month Ago: 620,107

Year Ago: 500,000

Satisfaction was discreetly shown at the British Foreign Office in London last week as dispatches from Shanghai urgently warned that its Japanese conquerors were about to stage a blatant "Victory Parade," with chances 10-to-1 in favor of some aggrieved Chinese patriot hurling a bomb.

"That might be the best thing that could happen,'' sagely observed an eminent, striped-trousered, black-jacketed British civil servant. "Without some such incident it is difficult for public opinion to grasp the immense significance of the acts of Japan, and unless public opinion is strongly aroused what can one do?"

On the scene in Shanghai's International Settlement, every effort to dissuade the Japanese from celebrating their victory with a boastful parade was made, meanwhile, by British Brigadier Alexander Telfer-Smollett and the U. S. Marines' Brigadier General John C. Beaumont. After they had twice protested in vain to the Japanese, a high U. S. official, lacking in Shanghai the detached perspective of London, cried: "If the Chinese fire a single shot, God knows what will happen! To hold such a procession at such a time is to invite disaster!"

Many Japanese civilians liquored up heavily before the Victory Parade. "They swaggered offensively, shoved Chinese civilians into the gutters and in some cases tripped them into falling, whereupon there was uproarious laughter from the Japanese," grimly cabled New York Timesman Hallett Abend. Leading the parade came Japanese officers riding in motor cars or on horses so shockingly thin and ill-cared for as to make many a spectator gasp. Well-fed, clean-uniformed Japanese infantry came next, the middle-aged troops of the Son of Heaven who are invading China while his better, hardier and younger soldiers guard Manchukuo against Soviet Russia. After the infantry came machine guns, then mountain guns dismantled and packed on skinny horses, finally rumbling heavy artillery, munitions wagons and field artillery corps--the whole Victory Parade of such length that it took half-an-hour to pass a given point.

Just at the corner of Nanking Road, not one block from the Wing On department store, accidentally demolished by Chinese air bombs last August, the inevitable grenade was thrown. "I saw a figure across the street throw something," John McPhee, Scottish inspector of Shanghai police, related afterward. "I watched a blur coming toward me. The object hit the ground and rolled between my feet. I pushed a Japanese civilian away and turned around just as the object exploded. A piece of shrapnel cut through my coat and hit my police card. I'm pretty lucky. I thought I was a goner."

"I saw three Japanese soldiers struck by fragments and stumble haltingly," said Publisher George Bruce of the Shanghai Evening Post & Mercury. "There was a burst of blue-black smoke. The parade broke for a distance of 100 yards. For a moment everything was quiet. Then the Japanese soldiers began scattering to both sides of the street. The exact time was 12:46 p.m."

Nobody had been killed, but Chinese well know that out of such an explosion as this Tokyo has often in the past fashioned demands upon China of extortionate severity. There was a short, yelling chase down an alley and a Chinese policeman shot dead a man who was, said the police marksman, the man who threw the grenade. At first he was called a Korean, then a Chinese. His name did not come out last week. Before the parade could reform there occurred another, equally fatalistic demonstration. A Chinese patriot, who had watched the bomb explode, gave a shrill cry: "Long live the Kuomintang!" (Government Party), and committed suicide by leaping off the top of a tall building.

One more spine-tingling incident closed the day. After the bombing, Japanese patrols occupied 30 square blocks in Shanghai in the district where it occurred. The maneuver blocked traffic in the International Settlement and a U. S. Marine courier ignored a pistol leveled at him as he rode his motorcycle through the Japanese lines. When U.S. Marine commander, General Beaumont, learned that these Japanese patrols overlapped three blocks into the section of Shanghai under U. S. guard, he sent Colonel Charles F. B. Price to visit the Japanese commander and tell him to get his men out. The Marine officers had to do a good deal of bellowing and bristling to get to the Japanese commander. "You are practically invading the United States defense sector!" yelled monolingual Leatherneck Price, thus whooping the word "INVASION!" into a thousand scareheads. "You must withdraw immediately."

Claiming he had not known any Japanese troops were trespassing on U. S.-guarded ground, the Japanese commander promptly ordered their withdrawal. Same night a representative of the victorious Japanese commander in chief at Shanghai, long-eared General Iwane Matsui, visited the scene of the bombing, and there under the dim glow of street lights promised the Settlement police commissioner, British Major F. W. Gerrard, to withdraw at once all Japanese forces from the 30 square block area, leave further investigation of the bomb outrage to the Shanghai Municipality.

Old China hands could scarcely remember an instance in which a Japanese commander has ever behaved with such moderation. To them it reflected General Matsui's plain eagerness to induce Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek to sue speedily for peace. Chinese Generalissimo Chiang had meanwhile left Nanking, which advancing Japanese forces were rapidly approaching, and arrived at the mountain resort Kuling. There German Ambassador Dr. Oskar Trautmann offered Berlin's services a.s a mediator between China and Japan, apparently was rebuffed. The Soviet Embassy reportedly sent an attache to urge Premier Chiang to join China's Kuomintang Party to the Communist International and appoint Chinese Communist General Chu Teh to high command in the Chinese Army. The Generalissimo was further harassed by news from Hankow that leading Kuomintang Politician Wang Ching-wei had manifestoed to the Chinese Government: "If you want peace, you had better make peace before the fall of Nanking. What says our ancient proverb: 'It is a humiliation to make peace with the enemy under the city walls.' "

The Japanese advance was now sweeping forward with such phenomenal speed that it covered 55 miles last week, this week rolled up the Purple Mountain to seize the $3,000,000 marble and granite tomb of sainted Dr. Sun Yat-sen just outside Nanking which Japanese bombing planes set afire. Japanese heroes of this advance were two junior officers who are competing to see which can first kill with his sword a total of 100 "resisting Chinese." Latest scores: Sub-Lieutenant Takeshi Noda, 78; Sub-Lieutenant Toshaiku Mukai, 89. Whether or not Moscow was forcing Chiang into Communism as the price of Soviet aid, there had arrived from Russia last week 300 Soviet bombers, 800 h.p. twin-engine types. capable of 250 m.p.h. Japanese claimed to have shot down ten of these at flaming Nanking, seemingly abandoned by Generalissimo Chiang, despite his vows to "defend it to the last."

Private advices to Shanghai foreigners from North China this week were most grave. They indicated that, while Japanese troops were strongly holding the main lines of their advance, the Chinese peasantry in the countryside was being overrun and robbed by every species of native desperado, from beaten Chinese soldiers to professional Chinese bandits who are taking advantage of war conditions. Best information was that, while Japanese garrisons are occasionally raided, the Chinese are raiding chiefly defenseless Chinese towns and villages.

Possibly the gravest political news from the Far East last week was that the British Government, having just caused its embassy to China to flee from Nanking 400 miles upriver to Hankow, now an official seat of the Chinese Government (TIME, Nov. 29), suddenly ordered the embassy to proceed overland 625 miles to Canton and thence by boat 493 miles to Shanghai, seat of Japanese power in China. His Majesty's Government arranged with Tokyo that Japanese planes will not bomb the train, with huge Union Jacks painted on the roof, on which the embassy is to speed to Canton. The U. S. and other foreign embassies & legations were staying at Hankow this week, that is, staying with the Chinese Government of Generalissimo Chiang. That the gentlemen of England have in mind recognizing ultimately some other Chinese Government, such as the Japanese are preparing to set up in puppet form, was not a necessary assumption. As practiced by the British Foreign Office, the art of diplomacy is to keep out of all tight corners, and Hankow may soon become extremely tight, even dangerous. Ensconced comfortably at Shanghai, with British capital ships in the offing, the embassy of His Majesty's Government will be a cat, supple and well able to jump in any direction for the welfare of Humanity--and Britain.

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