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In London it was presently announced that Sir Robert had received "most specific" assurances. It was also pointed out that the British investment stake in South China is a small fraction of what it is in other parts of China, notably in the Shanghai International Settlement, thus far respected by Japan.
All China watched breathlessly to see whether the Cantonese military leaders would resist Japan or waver in the allegiance which nearly all Chinese have shown to Chiang Kaishek, "The Great Unifier." His entourage last week put the blame on Neville Chamberlain, attributed the Japanese drive on Canton to collapse of British prestige at Munich and predicted that not only will the Cantonese fight but their resistance will so overextend Japan that it will cost her the war.
Cantonese form the majority of Chinese living abroad and these are sure to quicken their cash contributions of millions to the Generalissimo now that Canton is at stake. White correspondents in Tokyo flashed that the Japanese would have preferred a European war to the peace of Munich, since war would have completely tied British hands in the Far East. Tokyo was watching Joseph Stalin as well as Neville Chamberlain, and when the purge of the Soviet Far East Army officers got under way recently, Japan concluded she need not keep so many troops in North China and Manchukuo facing the Russians. It was mainly Japanese forces released from their "watch in the North" who drove into South China this week.
Meanwhile the two main prongs of Japan's drive in Central China on Hankow closed pincers-like. At Sinyang the Japanese blasted their way into the walled city and cut the only railway over which Russian supplies could reach Hankow. On the Yangtze River Japanese naval vessels poured shells on the fortified heights of Maoshan and Shihhweiyao, on opposite banks of the river and only 60 miles in a beeline from Hankow.