CHINA: Swift Disaster

It was a week of stunning, swift disaster in China. Nearly a million Communist troops along a 400-mile front poured across the broad Yangtze, Nationalist China's last great defensive barrier, and swept government positions aside like puny earthworks in a raging tide. The Communists moved in with impressive speed. In four days they took Nanking, cut off Shanghai, and captured half a dozen strategic Nationalist cities. They were driving hard for the rest of free China not yet engulfed in the Red flood.

In a joint order of the day, Communist Boss Mao Tse-tung...

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