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Lean, good-humored Brigadier General Gilbert X. ("Buck") Cheves, cavalryman by background, a port commander in the Service Forces by necessity, has broken the Calcutta bottleneck. During his first month on the job, the tonnage unloaded doubled. Recently a Liberty which had taken ten days to load in the U.S. was emptied on the Hooghly in 46 hours 4 minutes (standard elsewhere: seven to nine days).
The next big step to redress the debacle in south China will probably have to wait for the fall of Germany. With the diversion of material no longer needed for Europe, the volume of war supplies for Asia will grow more rapidly. For example, heavy bomber groups can fly from Britain or Italy to India, carrying their own ground crews. Ships on their way to Europe with munitions can be diverted to Calcutta or Colombo. There will be plenty of men and arms; and some should be able to move over a rerouted Burma Road through Myitkyina and Tengyueh into China. But still there will be difficulty finding bases close enough to the enemy to use all this military windfall effectively. But the slowly rising pressure on Japan will mount more swiftly, and aid will come not only directly to China but month by month as Admiral Nimitz moves across the Pacific—and probably from another source. Russia, meticulously neutral until Germany's fall, will want to have the voice which only an active partner can have in the Pacific settlement (see FOREIGN NEWS).
*Since the Japanese drove south from Changsha in June, the Fourteenth has lost fighter strips at Lishui in Kiangsu Province, Wenchow in Chekiang Province and a third north of Hengyang; it has lost major bases at Hengyang, Ling-ling and finally Kweilin. It has fallen back on Liuchow (now threatened), 90 miles southeast of Kweilin, and Nanning, 115 miles farther along the same line (now also threatened).