Since the offensive began on Tuesday on a comparatively narrow front, the Japanese have extended their operations to the left and right, and. claim the capture of a dozen small towns and villages along a 70-mile front stretching from the mountains west of the Peiping-Hankow Railway through Kuan to a point thirty miles from Tientsin.
After crossing the Hun River, the Japanese assert -that they made advance from four to nine miles during. the first 24 hours of the battle, which is the most important in the present hostilities in North China.
Chinese troops, estimated to number more than 100,000, fought a most stubborn rear-guard action against the overwhelming mechanical equipment of the Japanese. Whole companies were wiped out in covering the retreat of their comrades. The Japanese assert that 1,000 Chinese dead were counted in one narrow sector. Once across the river, the Japanese pushed on relentlessly, making effective use of their tanks on the flat Hopei plain.
According to Japanese military information, the Chinese troops in the Lianghsiang sector are commanded by Gen. Sun Lien-chung, and those in the Kuan sector by Gen, Wan Fu-lin.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.