Shantung Gobbled

Of China's 4,480,992 square miles Japanese forces took: 13,825 in the last week 26,415 in the last month 168,827 in the last year 668,827 since 1931

The whole tip of the Shantung peninsula was last week nipped off by Japanese forces. They not only completed the capture of Tsingtao (TIME, Jan. 10), but with little fighting gained control at one stroke of 11,000 square miles, their biggest haul in weeks. It was a profitless victory in one respect, for they found Chinese had wrecked and burned some $100,000,000 of Japanese property, mostly factories and warehouses, including 438 Japanese private homes in Tsingtao. This, however, will provide a good excuse for demanding an indemnity and the forehanded Japanese promptly valued their wrecked houses at some $15,000 apiece, estimating the damage to them at $6,000,000.

China's once potent Governor Han Fu-Chu of Shantung, who recently yielded his capital Tsinan to the Japanese, last week was exhorted to "Hold Tsining at any cost!" To Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (360 miles away at Hankow), who wired this advice, Governor Han wired back: "I could not hold Tsinan, so I do not believe I am able to hold Tsining."

He was right. Tsining fell. General Han retreated so far that he still had scarcely one-third of Shantung to call his own. The Japanese gobbled up another 2,725 square miles.

Next Japanese objective was another so-called "Chinese Hindenburg Line." The first, an impressive array of cement pillbox forts strung across the Yangtze delta back of Shanghai, was supposed to defend Nanking, but the defenders simply fled, not waiting to be attacked (TIME, Nov. 29). This Hindenburg Line, much more heavily fortified and built under German military engineers during the past six years, was constructed to resist an attack from the north at just about the point the Japanese have reached this week, a few miles north of Suchow. But now, if the Japanese cannot take it from the north they could send an army from Nanking to take it from the south.

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