Another Paris

Kweilin, the "Paris of China," was close to panic again. Panic had struck first seven weeks ago when the Japanese, poised in Hengyang, had seemed headed for the battered but glamorous Kwangsi city (pop. 100,000), whose holiday habits and friendly girls have made Kweilin's name blessed among U.S. airforcemen on pass.

That time the Fourteenth Air Force's big Kweilin base had been stripped and partly scorched. But the panic had died in a crackle of firecrackers when the Chinese Army and the Fourteenth's airmen had checked the enemy at Hengyang. This time the threat to Kweilin was more serious than before.

The Japs had taken stubborn Hengyang, key point on the Hankow-Canton railroad. Now, instead of continuing directly south toward Canton, they flung 120,000 troops southwest along the spur line toward Kweilin. An underprivileged Chinese Army, ill-nourished, ill-armed, ill-clad, stood before them, the Fourteenth's flyers hammered them desperately from above.

Reclaiming Lost Legions. The Chinese high command tried to weaken the Jap blow by staging a diversion far to the north, around Ichang on the Yangtze River. But Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek knew that something more than a diversion was needed. Even as Hengyang was falling, he had put the finishing touches to a plan for Army reform which would doubtless meet opposition from vested military interests, a plan whose terms proclaimed that all was far from well in China's war-worn Army. Its chief points:

1) Separation of political and military powers; war-zone commanders to be barred from functioning as provincial governors.

2) All troops to be thoroughly trained.

3) Feeding and medical care to be markedly improved.

4) Number of units to be reduced, and remaining units to be brought to full-roster strength and physical fitness.

5) Conscription of secondary-school students and graduates, hitherto draft-exempt, to form student brigades.

End of the Blockade. These long-overdue reforms, if implemented in time, could rejuvenate the wearied Chinese Army. So could U.S. artillerymen who, by Jap account, were being flown to China by the hundreds. But the Chinese would still need supplies from the west. To open a supply route, their tattered Chinese divisions fought harder last week up & down the heartbreaking, jungle-clad ridges of the Salween River front, aiming to join with General Stilwell's army pushing east from Myitkyina.

That juncture would give China a corridor to India. It would bring in trucks to replace the worn-out jalopies on which China now relies. It would bring a pipeline, with gasoline for Chennault's planes. China's troubles still would not be ended, but they would be very materially lessened.

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