"Its length is 300 paces, and its width eight paces; so that ten mounted men can, without inconvenience, ride abreast." So wrote young Marco Polo after he first saw the bridge of Lukouchiao in the year 1277. But this same bridge, still standing and now named for the Venetian traveler, will be more remembered in history for a fateful incident which happened one hot, fretful summer night, 660 years later.
On the night of July 7, 1937, the commander of the Japanese North China Garrison, holding night "maneuvers" near the bridge, noticed that one of his men was missing. Jumping at once to the remarkable conclusion that the man had been kidnapped by Chinese troops and spirited into a nearby walled town, he demanded that his force be admitted to the town. The demand was naturally refused. Then, according to the Japanese legend, the Chinese wantonly opened fire on the innocent little servants of the Son of the Sun, and obliged them to fire back—and therefore obliged Japan to send about 1,125,000 armed men on to Chinese soil to establish a New Order in East Asia. Thus began the war in China. This week the China incident is three years old. In that time Republican Spain, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Finland, Norway, Denmark, The Lowlands, the Baltic States, even the French Empire, have all succumbed to treachery or superior military might. And all that time the Chinese race, supposedly the most craven and corruptible people on earth, have held back the sharp, mechanical thrusts of one of the three supposedly toughest and most intriguing countries on earth. All the world, including China, has been amazed at this heroic record.
In the first year Japan's advances were incredibly swift, at least by the standards of all previous wars. At something like forced-march rate, columns fanned out from Peking and Tientsin to west and south. Shanghai was taken after stubborn resistance (TIME, Aug. 30, 1937). The Chinese Armies fought rear-guard actions up to Nanking, where a ferociously maddened Japanese Army committed one of history's most terrible acts (TIME, Dec.27, 1937). Murder, rape, destruction, looting—a crazy vindictiveness on the part of the Japanese—resulted in some 50,000 civilian deaths.
Having nominally captured 465,000 square miles populated by 115,000,000 Chinese, the Japanese confidently (and therefore halfheartedly) offered peace. The Chinese refused. The Japanese set about trying to consolidate the occupied areas, riddled by guerrillas. During this process a large force allowed itself to be hemmed in by masses of Chinese at Taierchwang and suffered the worst Japanese defeat in modern history (TIME, April 25, 1938).
In the second year Japan's slowing thunderbolt almost rolled to a stop. Only major successes were the capture of Hankow, where the Government had lighted after the fall of Nanking, and whence it moved on to Chungking (TIME, Feb. 21, 1938); the dreadful bombing and subsequent capture of Canton (TIME, June 30, 1938), cutting off the supply route from Britain's Hong Kong to the interior; the investment of most of the coast line as far down as Hong Kong; the occupation, for strategic reasons, of Hainan Island; and terrific bombings of Chungking—which served to consolidate rather than break Chinese morale.