For six long years of war, news from embattled China funneled through the tumbledown, mud-&-lath buildings of the Chungking Press Hostel. Last week, the last of the foreign-press corps followed the Central Government to Nanking. The bamboo-fenced compound looked as dreary and forsaken as an empty schoolyard—which it is.
When the ruinous Jap air raid of May 4, 1939 flattened 25% of Chungking's downtown buildings, the Government had turned over the former Pa Hsien Middle School compound to the press. All the place ever had in its favor was its central location. Air-raid...