New Offensive

The Chinese last week continued their magnificent defense of their so-called "Hindenburg Line" (TIME, March 21), protecting the vital east-west Lunghai Railroad, showed stubborn resistance particularly at Kaifeng, some 300 miles inland from the Yellow Sea. Jubilantly, Chinese General Hsu Pei-ken, press officer to Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek, declared, "The Japanese are in the soup!"

The Japanese, as they have done time and again in the last eight months, continued to keep the Chinese busy at one place, Kaifeng, while they suddenly last week resumed a halted offensive at another, this time along the Tientsin-Pukow railroad, 175 miles east of Kaifeng and 125 miles from the Yellow Sea. Japanese forces hurled themselves southward along the railway in an attempt to capture Suchow, strategic junction of the Lunghai and Tientsin-Pukow lines and main defense centre of the "Hindenburg Line." Furiously battling Chinese sought to stem the advance by hammering away with repeated flank attacks until some 30,000 were reported killed on both sides. By week's end Japanese planes had bombed Suchow in preparation for a land assault and the Japanese forces pressed down toward the city's outskirts.

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