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PM, SUNDAY, JULY 11, 1943        PM's DAILY PICTURE

Supply Still Problem in 7-Year War
By Ken Clark

China last week entered the seventh year of its war with Japan with morale high, short on supplies but in prospect of considerably more material than it has been getting from its Allies.

A new route--hazardous, expensive and slow--has been opened to Chungking. It extends from Karachi, India, to Quetta, Baluchistan and thence to Zahedan, Persia, by [[?]]ail. Here supplies are transferred to trucks[[?]] Meshed, then across the Russian-Persian border at Bajgiran to ashkabad on the Turkestan-Siberia railway. The supplies then move by rail over 1000 miles to Alma [[??]] Siberia. There trucks take over again [[?]] the overland haul to Chungking or the [[?]]ghting front.
The quantity of stuff transported over this devious and difficult road, running through some of the roughest and wildest country in the world, is undoubtedly nothing like the volume that formerly went through Chungking over the Burma road. But the route is said to be workable and to be a useful adjunct in supplying China.
Bombers Can Fly
Probably more important from the military point of view at the moment is the Delhi-Chungking airline It is not possible, of course, to transport over this much of the heavy ground equipment which will be necessary to drive the Japanese permanently from their strongholds in eastern China. However, it becomes increasingly useful with the rise in U.S. bomber and transport plane production. Recent additions of heavy bombers carrying their own fuel supplies, (H)o Brig. Gen. Claire L. Chennault's 14th Air Force, preceded a considerable Chinese victory in the middle Yangtze River sector. 
There, in June, the Chinese thrust back with great loss to the enemy a drive to seize control of the Hupeh rice-bowl, a dangerous push which had moved to within 265 miles of Chungking.

The Old Burma Road
A vital prospect in the supply problem is the reopening of the Burma Road. In a recent dispatch from Washington PM's General wrote:
"The monsoons will end late in October or early in November. Within days, or at most weeks, after the rains cease, a powerful British and American force, supported by British naval units in the Bay of Bengal, will stage a full scale assault on Rangoon to reopen the Burma Road lifeline into Free China, British sources of unquestioned authority have made this decision known unofficially."
Now in the prospect of the lifting of the Siege of China, the fortitude and skill of (C)hiang-kai-shek's still poorly equipped armies and the spirit of the Chinese people themselves remains the strongest weapon in allied hands.
Even in those shaded areas shown on the East cost as held by the enemy, there are considerable sections dominated by Chinese regulars and guerillas. The besieging invaders are themselves besieged.