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The third year, summer of 1939, opened with spectacular Chinese victories in Shansi Province. The Japanese shook up their high command and started a face-saving drive on Changsha. Their faces were slapped instead, in what Chungking called "the biggest single victory of the war." Desperate, the Japanese undertook a surprise attack, this time successful, on Nanning, in order to cut down on the flow of munitions from French Indo-China into China. This was a serious blow to the Chinese. The fall of Ichang early this month gave the Japanese a convenient base for new and heavier-than-ever bombing attacks on Chungking. But the biggest Japanese successes of 1939-40 were accomplished by the Germans in Poland, Norway, Flanders, France.
Each successive Hitler victory was in effect a Japanese victory. Each Allied setback loosened the pegs of prestige and force by which the French, British and Dutch held down their Far Eastern spheres of interest, whence came most of China's outside help. The Japanese well know that if they can shake those three nations loose, China will be nearly won. For China's only other friend and armorer is Russia, and across the dreary 2,000-mile road from Siberia, so rough that most trucks are permanently crippled by just one trip over it, China has been getting perhaps 10% of her outside supplies. Without outside help China is just about done for.
And so the campaign which the Japanese undertook against France and Britain in the East last fortnight was not only the most important of the China war's third year; it was likely to prove decisive, it might pave the way at last for the New Order.
Peace Coup? Under Generalissimo and Mme. Chiang Kaishek, China has superabundant morale for resistance, but determination will not ground enemy airplanes or choke rifles. So strong, however, is the determination of the present Chungking Government that even if Japan cuts off most of China's supplies, their capitulation is improbable. What is perhaps more possible, certainly what the Japanese hope for, is some sort of coup within Chungking —some violent episode of treachery like the famous Sian kidnapping of Chiang.
The Generalissimo remains the symbol of unity, idol of the people, leader of the Army—and if anything happened to him, China's morale, which is her most precious asset, would crumble. Or if any hurt should come to his fragile, energetic, moral wife, whose New Life Movement supplied China with its backbone of courage and kept it stiffened from 1937 to 1940, the result would be almost as serious.
In a high stone-walled Chungking compound, the "Gissimo" and "Gissima," as Chungkingites call them, receive hundreds of generals, diplomats, politicians, distinguished foreign journalists. Centre of resistance and focus of command, the compound is also an amusing object of gossip. No act of this remarkable pair is too trivial for discussion all over China: if he flies to Chengtu for two days' rest, it is taken to mean that the Government is moving; if she flies to Hong Kong to have her teeth fixed, it is rumored that China will borrow £25,000,000 from Britain.