(3 of 4)
First of these was the ancient Silk Road, running 2,000 miles from Sian through Sinkiang (once part of China proper but now almost completely under Soviet dominance) to the Russian centres of Alma Ata and Sergiopol, on Russia's new Turk-Sib railroad. Over this Silk Road, then called the Imperial Highway, some 2,000 years ago camel caravans, loaded with silk, jade and lacquer, plodded their way to Samarkand, where the goods were shipped to Byzantium, Tyre, Rome. Seven centuries ago Marco Polo pushed his way down the Silk Road from the West to reach the court of Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan, and gazed upon a civilization which surpassed that of his native Venice. Year ago 700,000 coolies with new China fervor and old China tools set to work on the half-buried old Silk Road and today a fleet of 1,000 Russian trucks shuttle over it carrying supplies and munitions to the heart of China.
The other three routes, none as heavily-used as the Silk Road, are: 1) the 1,800-mile Sian-Urga motor road, once a caravan trail across the limitless sands of the Gobi Desert, 2) the 1,350-mile rail and road route from Kunming down to British Burma, and 3) the newly-built Chinese railroad from Kunming to Laokai, which connects with the French Indo-China railroad. Hundreds of miles of other new roads connecting these main routes to many parts of the new "New China" have also been built.
Month ago Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek issued a blunt warning to Great Britain that unless China received aid in the form of money or supplies, he would be forced to line up still closer with Soviet Russia. Last week this warning produced results. In Britain a bill was on its way through Parliament which will enable the Government to extend sizable export credits to China. From the U. S. also came a $25,000,000 loan (much of which undoubtedly will be used to buy U. S. trucks and motor parts) granted by the New Deal's Export-Import Bank—interpreted as the U. S. answer to Japan's slamming the once open door to U. S. commerce in the occupied regions. Another boost to China came in the form of 15 fighting planes contributed by sympathizers in the U. S., Canada and Cuba.
Russia's Battle? Not long ago a delegation from bleak and once-unfriendly Tibet* tramped to the Chinese military headquarters in Szechwan Province, there presented the Generalissimo with 10,000 sheepskins contributed by Tibetan monks, officials and peasants as "an expression of unity against the Japanese invasion." Through the Soviet-dominated territories of Sinkiang and Outer Mongolia, where before the war the Chinese Government had nothing but enemies, now come two of China's main supply lines.
If Chiang is driven from the upper Yangtze valley, he may eventually have to retire to the Soviet-controlled areas of Sinkiang and Outer Mongolia. Should that occur China's cause will necessarily become Russia's battle. For Russia cannot tolerate a Japanese threat to the long southern border of Siberia and the trans-Siberian railroad. But before that can happen Japan, which conquered one New China, will have to conquer still another New China not so strong in resources but much stronger in natural defenses.