Death by Blockade?

The Japanese know Dr. Shuhsi Hsu. He has been needling them since long before the invasion of Manchuria. He has written 17 volumes on Far Eastern Affairs, which have rebutted Japanese misrepresentations from Geneva to Washington. Western nations have learned by now that when Dr. Hsu speaks he knows what he is talking about. They also know that he speaks the truth as he sees it. Last week Dr. Hsu spoke again.

Not as a Government official, but as a world citizen, a Christian, a Doctor of Philosophy of Columbia University, a member of the original "Sworn Society" of the Chinese Revolution and as an authority on China, Dr. Hsu foresaw the possibility of a Chinese collapse.

"China will fight and fight to the end regardless of consequences," he said. But the Chinese will to fight does not mean that China cannot be strangled to death by blockade. Dr. Hsu's thesis:

> Just as blockade strangled the Southern States in the U.S. Civil War, the Boers in Africa and the Central Powers in World War I, the Japanese blockade is now affecting China. China needs parts and repairs for its factories, gasoline for its transport, food for its people, hope for its leaders and disillusioned intellectuals.

> Shipments of Lend-Lease goods by air transport are only a tiny part of the supplies (of which Lend-Lease was only a fraction) which came over the Burma Road. Far greater supplies were smuggled in from the coast.

> If China is weakened by a deadlocked war and fantastic inflation until it is forced into becoming a passive ally, the United Nations will face terrific odds in defeating Japan. Neither a strategy based on island-to-island conquest in the South Pacific, nor one based on the remote hope of being able to mount an attack via Rus-sian Siberia, is sound. (If Russia declares war, says Dr. Hsu, Japan can easily cut the lifeline of the Trans-Siberian railway, and has consistently kept an approximate 25% preponderance of troops facing the Russians.) Therefore United Nations strategy will call for a huge armada of ships and millions of men if China cannot be used as an attack base.

> To free China from blockade and to insure that continental bases are maintained within reasonable striking distance of Japan, the United Nations must: 1) retake Burma to reopen the Burma Road; 2) allocate more war materials to China; 3) utilize the experience and ability of Chinese militarists in deciding grand strategy.

Men and Hunger. Not from Dr. Hsu himself but in reports from China there was documentation last week for the Hsu thesis. The Casablanca conference decision to demand the unconditional surrender of Japan as well as Germany and Italy allayed some Chinese fears that the Pacific theater might be allowed to degenerate into a stalemate peace. The fact that China was kept informed of military decisions proved that China was not forgotten. But the fact that China was not invited to attend left a sour taste.

The Chinese fronts still hold. But the soldiers who hold them have changed. China's heroes are sick. For every man who lies on a reed pallet with battle wounds, ten lie ill of disease. For every man who tosses with dysentery, pneumonia or malaria in a hospital, four others suffer, unattended, in bivouac or trench. At the root of all this aching misery is a malnutrition so vast that no one dares try to cope with it. The fevers of China creep into bodies which exist day after day on 24 oz. of rice. From this rice the heroes of China have to draw their fats, vitamins and carbohydrates. Only the northern troops of provident General Hu Tsung-nan have any health, for he made his men grow their own greens to add to their scant rations.

The Chinese fronts are quiet. The Jap is not attacking, but the Chinese now do not have the strength, or even the will, to rise up out of their slit trenches and march. Their lack of nourishment has come about, not because all China lacks food, but because China lacks transportation. China's armies can no longer be depended on to keep Japan at bay just by the supplying from the U.S. of mere trinkets of war. China needs mobility.

The Chinese fronts have gone lean and inglorious. Once there was terror, urgency, bombardment, earth to scorch and an enemy to hate. Now there is only hunger.

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