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At midnight, a U.S. newsman slipped through the windows of the Sian Guest House, evaded sleepy sentries, slopped through the mud of Shensi's capital to a dark crossroad. Muffled, slippered figures challenged him in low tones. Satisfied, the Chinese motioned the foreigner into a v;aiting truck. At dawn the truck was 30 miles beyond the border of Kuomintang China, lurching through the mountains toward Yenan, capital of Communist China. The year: 1939.

Since 1939, no U.S. correspondent has visited Yenan; the Central Government's military cordon around Communist China has effectively halted arms, munitions, medical supplies, funds and correspondents.

Foreigners in Chungking listen to Kuomintang complaints that the Communists: 1) maintain their own government, army and currency, collect their own taxes, refuse to obey Chungking's mandates; 2) are more interested in extending their political sphere than in fighting Japan; 3) have exceeded their agreed-to military strength.

Communists in Chungking retort that they: 1) cannot dissolve their armies and submit to Kuomintang military, civil and economic control without a guarantee of their survival as a political party; 2) fight the Japs wherever and whenever possible; 3) live under constant threat from 23 of the best of China's 113 Central Armies plus 45 others in reserve.

Yenan the city is no magnet to correspondents. Battered by continuous Jap bombings, it is a rubble heap inside ancient mud-and-stone walls; its inhabitants live in caves carved from the yellow loess mountains. But it is the political capital of North China's guerrilla areas with their 30 to 40 million inhabitants, and the military headquarters of a potentially powerful force of 500,000 regulars (a new high), perhaps a million irregulars.

Newsmen in Chungking last week received from Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek a curt reply to their request for permission to visit the Communist area. Said the Gissimo, who is now trying to settle the differences between Chungking and Red China: The Central Government will extend them a formal invitation "when the time comes."

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