One of the most potent men in China, one of the most trusted advisers of Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek, is "Organizer Chen Li-fu" as he likes to be called. In organizing the "New Life Movement," the "Culture Control Movement" and other causes dear to the Generalissimo & Mme Chiang right down to the "Read-a-Book Movement," no Chinese has won more kudos than Organizer Chen. Last week Hankow correspondents asked the Great Organizer to confirm or deny persistent rumors in high Chinese quarters that he has been advising the Generalissimo to make peace with Japan. Replied Chen Li-fu: "Our fundamental policy is unchanged and we will not be intimidated by the threats to Hankow and Canton. If the Japanese finally come to realization of the folly of their course and are prepared to offer us a formula for an honorable peace let them do so. It is not for us to do the proposing, for that would be a gesture of submission.
"We are the victims, not the aggressors. It is Japan's move."
Scorched Canton. The famed "Scorched Earth Policy" of Generalissimo Chiang, to destroy everything of value in Chinese cities likely to be taken by the Japanese, reached its spectacular climax last week at Canton. Dynamite charges carefully laid a few days before under the principal public buildings, factories and utility plants of South China's No. 1 city and No. 1 port, were touched off as the Japanese approached. Great fires sprang up, blazed over an area of several square miles. With Canton spurting smoke and flame, Chinese dynamiters wrecked the $8,000,000 Pearl River Bridge. The foreign quarter on Chameen Island was saved from catching fire only by a sudden shift in the wind.
Up to the last moment, 100,000 Chinese troops were reported resolved to defend Canton and solidly entrenched. Actually 1,500 Japanese soldiers, the advance guard of the Japanese invading force of 60,000, almost raced into Canton last week, having advanced 125 miles in ten days flat, without having been obliged to fight a single major battle. The Japanese, who had been told they must make "heroic efforts to take Canton at any cost by November 3," Birthday Anniversary of the great Emperor Meiji, thus found themselves 13 days ahead of schedule.
1,500 & 50,000. Some 50,000 Chinese remained in Canton, from which hundreds of thousands fled in recent weeks, pitiful refugees. The 1,500 Japanese at latest reports had not run amok as Japanese did after the fall of Nanking, but were described by Associated Press as busy trying to check civilian looters and Chinese who were setting fresh fires. The Canton waterworks were wrecked by Chinese to cripple fire fighting efforts.