CHINA: The Bear's Paw

For five long years rumors of China's imminent collapse have been thick as tea leaves on the bottom of a drained teapot. Last week they were thicker than ever. China's ragged army of rifleman and grenade-throwers had fought a critical campaign under appalling hardships (see WORLD BATTLEFRONTS). Washington gossips croaked the news that Vice President Henry Wallace brought Franklin Roosevelt from Chungking: China's situation is grave, even desperate. And last week neutral Russia, breaking its long reticence about the Sino-Japanese war, treated its exhausted neighbor to a stroke of the bear's...