Repeat Performance

The Japanese Army wants the city of Changsha badly, has wanted it for three years. Capital of Hunan Province, Changsha dominates highway and rail communications south of the Yangtze, is the center of some of the richest rice country in the world (TIME, Sept. 22). Twice the Japanese have tried to seize it; twice they have failed. The city was burned once--by the Chinese themselves, on the strength of a false rumor that the Japanese were on the city's outskirts. Last week the Japanese made their third try for Changsha, and had a good chance of getting it.

For a fortnight they had been pushing southward into Chinese defense positions below the strategic rail town of Yochow. Last week they sent a large flanking force down Tungting Lake. Under air and gunboat protection they landed in the Chinese rear, advanced to within 50 miles of Changsha. The Japanese said 20,000 Chinese troops were encircled.

To diminutive Cantonese General Hsueh Yo, commander in chief of the Ninth War Area and Governor of Hunan, the situation looked grim. The Japanese had crushing superiority in planes, artillery and mechanized equipment; they might have up to 100,000 men. The valley of the Hsiang River gave them a natural avenue of approach to his capital. A few crosswise streams and low hills were his only terrain advantages. General Hsueh studied the map, pondered. He had let the Japanese get within 15 miles of Changsha in 1939, then cut them to bits. But he had fought with crack Central Government divisions then. Now some of those troops had been transferred to Yunnan, 800 miles away, to stand guard against the Japanese in French Indo-China. In their place were Szechwanese provincial troops who might blow up in a pinch.

General Hsueh Yo had been in tight spots. He had led the famous ist Division under Chiang Kai-shek in the northern march that unified China in the '20s. They had won against all the world's opposition, in the teeth of all the warlords. This week he is in a tight spot again, fighting again to hold his capital, to keep its rice for China.

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