Heavenly Dog

At 4 p. m. one afternoon last week an air-raid alarm jarred Chungking. Return of fine weather had meant return of Japanese bombers, held off by three months of fog & mist. Earlier in the week two raids in which 36 Japanese planes took part had set fires that were still burning, started a flight of refugees that was still going on. At 4:20, 16 Chinese pursuit planes took off, disappeared in the smoky air. The remaining citizenry disappeared in caves and dugouts on Chungking's hillsides, where they sweltered in the hot afternoon.

As dusk came, but no Japanese bombers, the dugouts emptied. For months Chungking merchants have done their business late in the afternoon, opening shop at 4 p. m., in order to limit the danger from air raids. That night the life of the old grey-walled city, last capital of the Mings 300 years ago, third capital of Chiang Kaishek, again got back to a sort of wartime normal. Crowds swarmed down Dujugai, main street of a city that has grown from 635,000 to an estimated 2,000,000 in six months. Generalissimo Chiang and his wife inspected the areas bombed in the earlier raids. The power plant was functioning again. A Harvard graduate named Theodore White went to his room in the Canadian-French mission school. The Associated Press correspondent stepped out of his office. Suddenly, out of the leaden sky, at 6:30, 27 Japanese bombers swept in on Chungking from the north.

The bombers, their red-disc insignia plain to their victims below, maneuvered into position. In the twilight, soon made more brilliant by a full moon, they divided, one formation concentrating over Dujugai, another heading for the city's congested southern district, another concentrating on the hilltops where consulates are located.

Chungking is a gigantic anthill which sits where the Kialing joins the Yangtze River. Ancient, 100-ft. walls confine the old section of Chungking to five square miles of an eminence 150 ft. above the rivers. Inside walled Chungking the streets, now pitted with holes filled with water for fire prevention, rise steeply, often in steps, between flimsy wooden buildings crammed with refugees and Government offices. Across its congestion Japanese bombers laid parallel lines of destruction, a mile and a half long, 500 yards wide. They dropped more than 100 bombs.

A bomb hit 60 feet from the Associated Press building. One crashed through the roof of the British Embassy & Consulate. Another fell on the tennis court, killed 20 Chinese. The Canadian-French mission was demolished, the mangled body of a Chinese woman blown 200 yards through the window of Harvardman White's room. A bomb struck the Chungking power station. Chungking's radio went dead, the city's lights went out. The home of the British Vice Consul was struck three times, and fires surrounded the German Embassy & Consulate where, all night, the Consul General and his wife waited with cans of water to fight the flames. As morning came they watched helplessly while 100 Chinese, trapped against the base of the city wall outside their house, were burned to death.

Panic spread as rapidly as the fires that devastated the city. At one gate New York Times Correspondent Tillman Durdin saw the bodies of 20 people trampled to death trying to escape. Half-crazed civilians rushed to the riverside, piled into overloaded boats as the burning of Chungking illuminated the river. At midnight United Press Correspondent Robert Martin walked through the business district, crossed a street just as a burning building collapsed behind him, burying firemen and civilians. He saw the torn bodies of eight children in one heap, heard cries from beyond flames that coolie firemen were fighting ineffectually with hand pumps and pails of water lugged from the Yangtze.

Morning saw flames and smoke rising high over Chungking's jagged ramparts. Of the estimated 5,000 killed or injured in the city's three raids of the week, 3,750 were accounted for in the last one. (In Barcelona's worst three-day raid 1,200 were killed, 2,000 injured.) Rain fell, temporarily checking the fires. In the late afternoon a wind whipped them to new life as flames and the dynamite used to check them destroyed half the business section. The stream of refugees went on unceasingly, until estimates reached the staggering total of 1,700,000; food prices soared; eggs jumped from 8-c- to $9.60 a dozen.

In Tokyo, British Ambassador Sir Robert Craigie called on Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Renzo Sawada. Shortly before Diplomat Sawada had protested in the name of his Government against anti-Japanese terrorism, anti-Japanese propaganda, and "all other malignant acts" while proposing reform of Shanghai's International Settlement. He had charged extravagance, had insisted that Japan should have more police, an increased membership on the Settlement's Council and more representation among the officials in the area. Sir Robert had listened courteously, had transmitted the Japanese Government's views to London. But now it was Diplomat Sawada's turn. The bombing of the British Embassy and Consulate at Chungking was a grave matter. The Japanese explanation that the bombing was unavoidable because anti-aircraft were near the compound was "entirely unacceptable." Nor did the pooh-poohing of the incident by the Japanese at Shanghai sit well with the British. A spokesman there denied the use of incendiary bombs, claimed

Japanese aviators never used them. But over smoldering Chungking dirty weather, clouds, squalls and rain meant there would be no raids that day.

First raid on Chungking last week came on the night of the eclipse of the moon. To Chinese this lunar shadowing is a signal for celebration that began generations ago in primitive fear. Like the Persians and the American Indians, the Chinese once believed that the moon was being swallowed; like others they tried to frighten away the mystery of night by beating on drums and gongs, throwing things at the sky. Age refined the ceremony; poets refined it to a legend of the Heavenly Dog gnawing at the moon. Last week firecrackers in Shanghai, the sound of gongs & drums, led foreigners to believe that there had been a great Chinese victory. But in Chungking the Heavenly Dog was no legend, and the monster of the sky roamed free, too powerful for firecrackers to drive away, more horrible than the most savage legend of antiquity.

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