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Chinese terrain like so many drops of ink spilled on a tremendous blotter, Japan was far less able either to harass Russia or to challenge Britain and France in southeastern Asia. The great two-year-old undeclared war has thus acted as a wet blanket on the smoldering fires of the European continent.
Ability of the Japanese Army to push the undeclared war to a declared victory depends to a considerable extent on their ability to catch and kill one man. That man is the smoky-eyed Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek, symbol of the belated unification of China. For two years this perambulating symbol who travels fearlessly by plane over the mountains and deserts of his country has evaded capture from in front and assassination and bribery (old-Asiatic tools) from behind. Chiang is the needle in the greatest haystack in history.
The Opportunist. When the Japanese Army leaders, who have the ear of their Imperial Majesty Hirohito, cast the die for war in 1937, they thought it would all be over in a few months. They could make out a good case for their belief.
Chiang was no mixture of revolutionary and saint like Dr. Sun Yatsen, who in 1911 had stirred the Chinese to overthrow the corrupt Manchu dynasty. He was just the son of a South China wine merchant, who had been trained in the Military Academy at Tokyo, and later became president of the Whampoa Military School in Canton. When Dr. Sun died in 1925, China was overrun by warlords. It took a hardheaded soldier like Chiang to command the loyalty of the Kuomintang. Hardheaded men in Chinese politics are not stubborn idealists —against odds they normally quit or sell out.
Chiang had the earmarks of such a man.
He had willingly accepted Communist help during his great campaign from revolutionary Canton up to Shanghai and the rich Yangtze valley in 1927. Once his objectives were in sight the Generalissimo turned on the Communists and machine-gunned many of their Shanghai supporters.
For ten years he pursued a policy of buying off and placating the Japanese. He failed to stand in their way in 1931, when they grabbed at Manchuria. He failed to back up the courageous Chinese Nineteenth Route Army when it fought against Japanese invaders of the Chapei district of Shanghai in 1932. He let the northern province of Jehol fall into Japanese hands in 1933.
Chiang nursed his hold over the Yangtze valley, but patriotic Chinese intellectuals distrusted him. His only "offensive" gestures were made against the Chinese "Reds" of the southeastern province of Kiangsi, inner lair of the famed and capable Chinese Soviet generals, Mao Tse-tung and Chu Teh, whose "communism" amounts to little more than a Populistic desire to give land to the tax-gutted and landlord-ridden Chinese peasant. Counting on Chiang's willingness to let the great granary of North China go, the Japanese Minister of War, General Hajime Sugiyama gave his underlings the green light signal without first bothering to ascertain whether the Japanese economy could stand a long war.