(See Cover)
China was deadly tired. Since 1911 she had been going through a convulsive social revolution. Since 1937, almost singlehanded, she had been holding off the Japanese invaders from without. At the same time she had held off the Communists from within. To win against overwhelming Japanese odds, she had retreated from Peiping, from Shanghai, from Nanking, from Canton. To seal off the Communists, she had maintained a blockade against Yenan. Time, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek had reasoned, would give his Allies a chance to come to China's aid. So he had traded space for time. But after seven years of unflagging resistance, tired China was running short of space as well as time. At that moment Japan struck again, had cut China in two.
Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek had been fighting from the days when, as a young officer, he had helped Sun Yat-sen organize China's democratic revolution. He had fought the war lords, he had fought the Communists, he had fought the Japanese. When it was no longer possible to hold against the Japanese, he had organized the retreat. In Chungking he had organized the resistance. By an act of inflexible will, which could brook no opposition because it must remain inflexible, the Generalissimo had held together China's battered, wasting strength. He knew there were abuses—there are always abuses. He knew there was incompetence—there is always incompetence. But reforms must wait until the more urgent purpose was achieved—victory, victory which will make reforms inevitable. But victory had always been predicated upon real help from the Allies.
Last month it became clear to tired Chiang Kaishek, as to tired China, that reforms could not wait. for victory—that Allied help, until then too little, would be too late, that China, as usual, must rely upon China. Somehow China and Chiang found the strength. Chiang gave his armies a new, energetic Minister of War—young, able General Chen Cheng (TIME, Nov. 27). Just as important, Chiang had reorganized his civil administration. To China's No. 2 job, Acting President of the Executive Yuan, he appointed China's ablest administrator, his brother-in-law, Foreign Minister Tse-veng ("T.V.") Soong. The crisis — military, economic and political — was now at hand. On its outcome rested not only the future of Chiang Kai-shek's Government, but the future of China's 400,000,000 people. The crisis had brought T.V. his biggest, hardest task, for which all others had been the training.
It had also turned the Generalissimo to personal direction of the armies again. For the administrative reorganization had freed him for what he was most gifted—the organization of military victory.
The result showed at once at the front. Last week, with the Japanese armies 250 miles from Chungking, a Chinese army stopped the Japanese drive (see WORLD BATTLEFRONTS).
Historical Education. The Chinese upon whom so much of China's salvation depended was as much like an American as an Asiatic could, or would care to be. But his life read like a series of dramatic chapters from modern China's history.