Asiatics Under Fire

A few short-sighted incorrigibles among the Singapore British residents, true to a disappearing tradition, were frightfully put out by what they called the "Asiatic labor problem." Waiters had fled the Raffles Hotel; the British Army had had to take over the running of railroad trains ; personal servants vanished. But there was another side to the matter.

"When the full story of Singapore is known," wrote N.A.N.A.'s Douglas Wilkie, "the heroism of the Asiatics will not be judged by the need of some city restaurants to close down when their staffs walked out because inadequate shelters were provided. It will be judged by the type of Chinese transport drivers who carried on throughout the blitz, evoking the remark from an Australian officer supervising them: 'If I want the most efficiency in Singapore I will go first to the Scotsmen and then to the Chinese.' "

As everywhere, the Chinese in Singapore were stoical under bombing. Some 1,000 were mobilized, given weapons and put under twelve leaders sent from Chungking. Truckloads of khaki-clad Chinese Communists rode to battle singing and saluting with clenched fists--a salute which on one occasion was answered by a grinning policeman, whose main job for several years had been the rounding up of Communists. Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek sent his countrymen in Singapore a message: "Victory of the Allies means our victory."

Battle for Time. General Sir Archibald Wavell, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in the Southwestern Pacific had a clear sense of the importance of Singapore's battle. Said he last week to the men on Singapore:

Our part is to gain time for great reinforcements. .. . We are in a similar position to the original British Expeditionary Force which stopped the Germans and saved Europe in the first Battle of Ypres [on Nov. 9, 1914]. We must be worthy successors to them and save Asia by fighting these Japanese."

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