Respite

For the moment, at least, China was spared the ultimate in disaster. The Japanese drive northwest into the desolate province of Kweichow last week faltered, then ebbed back into neighboring Kwangsi. Either the enemy's swift advance had outrun its supply, or China had somehow found new strength to stop the drive that was designed to cut Chungking off, ultimately take it.

Through China's stern censorship came hints that something had been done to hearten the faltering defense army. Some reports indicated that troops from the northwest, where they had long been inactive, watching over the Chinese Communists, had been transferred south and thrown against the invaders. A British report went even further, suggested that Communist troops themselves had been brought down and put into battle. But these were rumors only.

Drive for the Kill. The drive for the final isolation of China had begun some three weeks ago, when the Japanese sent infantry and cavalry northwest on the road to Kweiyang, capital of Kweichow.

Before they stopped, China's woes had multiplied. The enemy had taken the base at Tushan, but before he did, more of China's precious supplies went up in smoke and flame. Ahead of the Jap spearhead, U.S. engineers set the torch to the base's munitions dumps. Thousands upon thousands of rounds of ammunition and fighting equipment of all kinds, stored up with infinite pain from the trickle of supply across the Hump from India, were blasted to destruction in a 48-hour holocaust.

The Japs plowed on, occupied an empty shell of a town beyond Tushan before they stopped. Then they began to back up, abandoned the scarred hulk of Tushan. Grim, cold, filthy Kweiyang, swarming with abjectly miserable refugees, was reprieved, and China with it.

But there was no reprieve for the ragged thousands of refugees. Through fields and villages stripped and bare of food they poured to the west. Along the route, a scattering of rickety horses collapsed, died, were stripped to their bones by the famished. Men, women & children died beside the roads and were left. Said one American officer: "We passed three babies on the road who had been born less than twelve hours before. Two were dead, one was still alive." It was a scene from the Bible: the rich in their finery, the poor in their rags, and crows picking at the stripped bodies along the road.

In China's direst crisis, China might still win. But for the little people, there were no bright spots on the pall of disaster.

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