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SPEECH OF LEE YA-CHING

September, 1937, only two months after Japan started her invasion, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek declared that the strategy of China should be reconstruction along with resistance. He realized, even then, that to [[strikethrough]] keep freedom alive in Asia and to [[/strikethrough]] rid our Fatherland of the enemy [[strikethrough]] China must be strong. [[/strikethrough]] is not enough unless there is an [[?]] program of reconstruction.

So China fights on, weakening her enemy - but daily becoming stronger herself, while on the other hand, she builds a new China upon the ashes of the old.

[[strikethrough]] All this while [[/strikethrough]] During these four and a half years when China fights gallantly on, many a stronger nation in Europe has fallen before military conquest. You must agree with me that it is an amazing record for unprepared China to withstand the onslaught of a superior military power armed with airplanes, tanks, and all the modern equipment of total warfare. It is amazing because military unpreparedness alone was not the only obstacle that China overcame to keep on fighting so that today her name can still be read upon the maps [[strikethrough]] and atlases [[/strikethrough]] of the world, while the names of almost a score of nations have vanished in flame and blood. I must tell you something about the unpreparedness of China on the medical front and industrial front when the war was thrust upon her - of the terrible suffering that she has had to withstand from bombings, [[strikethrough]] pestilence and [[/strikethrough]] famine, and from invasion.

China has four thousand years of history behind her and I think that of these the past four and a half years have been the most terrible. This thought came to me most strongly today as I flew over your great industrial cities and rich agricultural centers on my way here. As I saw below me hundreds of thousands of peaceful households with their families intact, and the great factories producing goods, I thought of China's burning [[strikethrough]] , sacked [[/strikethrough]] cities, her farms destroyed - her fathers, sons, mothers, daughters killed and their homes and villages smashed into rubble. And I saw again in my mind the pitiable