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4  L+
BLOCKADE OF CHINA
BARS AN OFFENSEIVE

U. S. Unable to Send Supplies
to Armies Until Land Route Is Won From Japanese

AMERICANS TRAIN ALLIES

Stilwell Eager for Combat but Only His Air Force Is Able to
Deliver Hard Blows

By Brookes Atkinson
By Wireless to The New York Times.

AT UNITED STATES HEADQUARTERS IN SOUTHERN CHINA, Oct. 16-Before the Japanese get permanently settled in Burma and Indo-China it would be wise to drive them back from some of their most paralyzing positions.  Ever since the disastrous Burma campaign in the spring of 1942 that has been the policy of Lieut. Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell.

A combat soldier, General Stilwell cannot tolerate stagnant warfare, especially when the enemy is industriously improving his advantages.  But under his personal command he has no combat forces in China except the small enterprising Fourteenth Air Force, which Maj. Gen. Claire L. Chennault leads.

As Chief of Staff to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, General Stilwell has no authority apart from Washington's orders to improve the combat efficiency of the Chinese Army.  He has the promise of new equipment for the Chinese Army to strengthen his hand, but since the equipment cannot be delivered in volume at present the promise, more abstract then real, carries only enigmatic weight with the practical-minded leaders of China.

What General Stilwell's relation to Admiral the Lord Louis Mountbatten's command in southeastern Asia will be has not been announced and may not alter his present situation radically.  At present he is supposed to make bricks without much straw at hand.  But Uncle Joe keeps plugging away, ordering where he can cajoling where he cannot.  Lean and sharp, he keeps flitting around through China over one corner of Burma into India with a campaign hat on his head and a musette bag slung over a shoulder.

Bigger Supplies Needed Quickly

Everything vital in the war in China depends upon supply.  The Fourteenth Air Force and our headquarters staff, to say nothing of the Chinese Army in Free China as a whole, need volume of transport quickly.

After seventeen months of plucky operation against great odds our supply lines have begun to acquire the illusion of permanence but in point of fact it is difficult, dangerous, vulnerable and wholly inadequate.  Even if it could be developed physically as magnificently as on paper it could never carry the volume of supplies needed now and what will be needed in the future.

Every day we as well as the Chinese are paying for the disastrous loss of Burma.  It limits operations now; it hampers preparations for the future.

Excepting a trickle of goods carried in small lots at considerable peril China is effectively walled off by the enemy.  Nothing short of sea dn land transport can provide real military security for China.

In the circumstances it seems remarkable to the layman that so much has been done.  Within the past four months a large block of offices has been built at our branch headquarters, every few days new officers and men turn up with expectant faces from the remote magical world of the United States.

Since April we have been operating field artillery and infantry training centers for Chinese officers.  A new one is being prepared in another part of southern China under the command of Brig Gen. T. S. Arms, who organized the Oriental Infantry Training Center.

8,000 Have Been Graduated

The field artillery center, under command of Brig. Gen. Jerome Jackson Waters Jr., has graduated about 5,000 officers and men; the infantry center, now under the command of Col. Harry A. Buckley, has graduated about 3,000.  After a period of training for field work American officers are being sent into the field with unites of the Chinese Army where they serve as instructors, advisers and observers and are required to help increase the combat efficiency of the Chinese Army in any way they can.  

We also have sent to China field hospitals that are now going into the field to aid the Chinese army.  Twenty-five to thirty per cent of their personnel are Chinese from America, most of whom are Cantonese and cannot speak the language of this part of China.

Although the Chinese were said to have been skeptical of the United States Army's field artillery and infantry training centers when they were first proposed the attitude now is cooperative and in some cases enthusiastic. Chinese candidates for the training centers have to take competitive examinations so the quality of students has improved.

Among the incongruous spectacles of this war is that of brisk young American officers, most of them from the reserve, training Chinese on their own authority.  After a few weeks it becomes tedious work for young Americans who want to get into the field where working Army officers belong and the commanders of our two training centers hope to give them in rotation opportunities to go to the front.

Although the training at both centers has to be swift, it is fundamental in the use and care of weapons, radio transmission, care of animals, military engineering, chemical warfare, first aid, personal hygiene, field sanitation and other practical subjects.  Most of the training outdoors is on shooting ranges of fields and woods, where military conditions are simulated.

But assistance we are giving the Chinese goes further than instruction with the new type of heavy shoe that is thought to give animals better protection, operating on animals that need serious attention, treating back sores, of which there are many, and fattening animals that have been inadequately fed.  Our ordnance officers, with the assistance of Chinese mechanics, are restoring warn Chinese equipment and trying to put it back in good condition.  Since our supply line makes it impossible to get proper tools and materials from America, our officers had to improvise tools and make equipment from scrap metal.

According to our program we are supposed to re-equip the Chinese Army.  Despite all the difficulties, we have managed to supply new mountain guns and other small weapons.  But the task of equipping the Chinese Army with modern weapons is stupendous. Since our drastically restricted supply line has to provide the minimum needs of our air force and other personnel, we cannot equip the Chinese Army until other means of transport are available.

The training program is enterprising, constructive and necessary.  But the present condition of the army can be explained to a large extent by the fact that China has been at war more than six years, the most productive parts of China are in the hands of the enemy, communications are primitive and China is not highly developed.

 No one can expect a miracle from the armies that have been at war so long.  One American officer believes the best way to improve the combat efficiency of the Chinese Army would be to feed it well.  In view of the poor life they have led, the Chinese soldiers are among the most heroic in the world.

Anyone who has seen Chinese at the front lines admires them and has complete confidence in their courage and sincerity.  But the deprivations of the more than six years of fighting without proper food, medical attention and equipment are factors that might reduce their combat spirit to a kind of dull, tenacious resistance.

Americans Are Disappointed

Most of the Americans brought from home to help retrain the Chinese Army are at first disappointed by what they see.  It is difficult for Americans to visualize the undeveloped conditions of this part of China.  But after six months' association with Chinese Army students, most Americans like them, sympathize with them and want to help them.

Most Americans want to do more than the Chinese authorities are willing to permit, for the Chinese people have considerable racial pride.  Having fought Japan for a long time while America was temporizing with the enemy, the Chinese are unwilling to turn over their army to the Americans, lock, stock and barrel, as if it were something they could not control or manage.  Our authority does not extend to the home life of the soldier.

In comparison with the vastness of the problem, our training program looks to a layman like spitting in the ocean.  But it is fair to add that the Americans in charge of the program and in daily association with Chinese officers are not discouraged and feel they are contributing something vital to the war.

Although General Stilwell's training program will not win the war singlehanded, it is a practical success.  The Chinese have a high appreciation of it and there is every reason to expect it is actually improving the combat efficiency of the Chinese Army.  Despite the fact that it was upset for a period, it will doubtless continue indefinitely and will probably spread.

As we approach the second anniversary of our Pacific war that is roughly the condition of the war in China.  Meanwhile the Japanese have had seventeen months to consolidate their positions in Burma and to build new roads and airfields, to accumulate supplies and to prepare to defend what they hold.

In the last fortnight they have been feeling out the Chinese positions east of the Salween River, bringing up rubber boats.  They have bombed Paoshan, which was cruelly blasted from the air on May 1, 1942.

The terrain in Burma and northern Indo-China is fantastically difficult, sharp mountains running north and south making movements east and west especially exhausting.  Malaria infests the jungles and there are tribes whose loyalties cannot be guaranteed in advance.

All advantages surely lie with the Japanese.  They have communication by railroad, highway and river.  If the Chinese advance into the wilderness of mountain and jungle their supply lines will become increasingly difficult for pack animals and human carriers.  Until land transport is open the Chinese-American military situation will not be secure.

Furthermore, every week of delay helps the Japanese strengthen and tighten their blockade.  Hence with the means now available the job of opening land transport is bound to be one of the most difficult operations of the wary against Japan.