Officials Anxious to Avoid Charge of Military Assistance; Civilian Use to Be Stipulated of the Chiang Kai-shek regime.
After reviewing the present stage of the hostilities and particularly pointing out the holding up of the Japanese advance in the Chengchow sector, the paper comes to the conclusion that Hankow will not fall into the hands of the Japanese before the middle Mf November this year.
Washington, Aug. 31.
Department of Agriculture officials are favourably disposed to exporting to China a portion of 100,000,000, bushels of wheat under the United States subsidized wheat export programme provided that the shipments conform with the United States neutrality policy in the Sino-Japanese war, authoritative sources said.
Officials in charge of the subsidy programme would be especially interested in exporting to China a surplus of the wheat from the northwestern states in the form of flour, they said.
In shipping flour instead of actual wheat to China additional employment would be provided by the northwestern mills prior to dispatch of the product, officials pointed out.
The Department of Agriculture regarded China as a logical outlet for the surplus wheat because prior to the Sino-Japanese hostilities, exports from the United States to China amounted sometimes to 10,000,000 bushels of wheat annually and flour shipments were sometimes more than 1,000,000 barrels.
Last year, however, there was no American wheat exported to China [and only 17,000 barrels of four were purchased by China, the officials said.
Government officials, however, seemed anxious to avoid anything which might be interpreted as military aid to China. Because of this situation it was understood that the Government would only export the wheat and flour to China if an arrangement could be made that the wheat and flour be used only by civilians, particularly refugees.—United Press, This city, "The Times" continues, is not nearly so isolated as many reports from the Far East have declared. Although the American-Chinese and the German-Chinese air lines have suspended' their services in consequence of the attack on a CN.AC. passenger plane, there is still regular aerial commvnicatior over Chungking and Yunnanfu. But more important still is the fact that railway communication from Hongkong to Hankow is operating, having been interrupted only once #gr three days although the line has been subjected to innumerable attacks from the air. But ever i? the Japanese did succeed in cutting off this line, the Chinese Have sufcient communications to obtain raw material necessary to carry on the war, the paper believes.
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Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.