Out of Bounds

Japanese-Manchukuoan troops last week were still trying to drive Soviet-Mongol forces back across the Khalka River. Correspondents who examined prisoners reported that the Russians were employing the poorest sort of cannon-fodder, ignorant conscripts who scarcely knew how to use rifles. The Japanese were, however, having their difficulties with fleets of Soviet tanks and a rejuvenated Air Force. New and better planes from bases in Siberia suddenly appeared and scattered high explosives and what imaginative Japanese officers said were "germ" bombs.

Irked by Japanese boasts of knocking down Russian planes like clay pigeons, Red aviators bombed the railhead at Halunarshan, 125 miles behind the front. The Japanese had scarcely begun to protest that this was not cricket when a squadron of Russian bombers peppered Furoruji, almost 400 miles from the scene of battle. This, the Japanese announced, "differed radically from the border affair" and was going too far. If the Russians do not stop dumping bombs deep in Manchukuo, they said, Japanese planes will carry the war into Siberia. Next day seven Red bombers took the dare and blasted Halunarshan again.

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