Short Way Around

The axiom that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line is a luxury of peacetime. Many of Britain's supplies for Egypt go around Africa. Most U. S. visitors to Berlin nowadays go by way of Japan, Manchukuo, Siberia, Russia.

The patient Chinese are especially adept at circumvention. Recently word came of a new supply line which skirts the entire area of Japanese domination (see map).

Britain's closing of the Burma Road last summer, and Japan's threat to it with her penetration of French Indo-China last autumn, made the Chinese fearful of being cut off from every source of military supplies except Russia. Consequently steps were taken to increase the flow by other routes. Smuggling was increased all along the South China coast--until fortnight ago the Japanese Navy announced it had had to tighten its blockade.

This put new emphasis on the roundabout northern way--into Vladivostok, by rail to Chita or Verkhne Udinsk, thence by mechanical and animal caravan down the Mongolian desert to China, 3,700 miles in all from Vladivostok to Chungking. Links in the route were not exactly new; their origins as a pack trail predated Marco Polo, Genghis Khan and the mighty Chin. About three years ago the Chinese began to fix up the road, stringing repair shops, gasoline dumps and food stations across the tundra.

The route promised to become important, especially if the Burma Road should be cut again. In winter the frozen, level tundra is ideal, since vehicles need not follow a narrow bombable ribbon. Much of the way runs through Russian territory, which the Japanese dare not touch. For understandable reasons, the Soviet news agency Tass denied that there was any such supply route.

But by last week traffic was reported going strong both ways: airplanes and their parts, refined oil and its derivatives, machinery, ammunition, medical supplies into China; furs, skins, animal fats, crude oil and other products out. This meant that supply vessels unloading at Vladivostok could clear port with pay loads.

This week U. S. Consul Angus I. Ward arrives in Vladivostok to open a U. S.

Consulate in that increasingly important port. Reports from China said that no less than 3,000 trucks were negotiating the trans-Mongolian route. It was a safe bet that a good many of that 3,000 were "fleshy trucks" of the Orient: mules, donkeys, camels, horses and men of burden.

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