Bombs, Floods and Plague The horrors of the war in
China have by now become almost indescribable. Death continues to fall from the air ; Canton has been bombed regularly in the last week in the effort to break the spirit of the capital of the Nationalist movement in South China. Even worse, however, are the effects of death by water, as the dykes of the flooded Yellow River have been breached. It is reported that 15o,000 Chinese peasants have been drowned, that 7,000 Japanese troops are trapped at Kaifeng and 5,000 drowned on the Lunghai railway, large stretches of which are submerged. Operations have been held up, and the Japanese may have to give up their advance along the railway and attempt to attack Hankow by moving up the Yangtse. But it is feared that, if the rains continue, the Grand Canal, the Hwai River and the Yangtse may also burst their banks ; the effects of the floods may be worse even than in the terrible year of 1931. In one sphere of the war Japan has had to admit defeat, as the province of Shansi is out of their control and is overrun by Chinese guerillas ; here the Japanese have adopted the policy of firing the villages. There remains only one form of death the Chinese have yet to endure, by pestilence, always a terrible danger in China, but after the effects of war and floods likely to exceed anything that has yet been known. * * * *
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