Aug. 26.
To the growing list of senseless outrages which have been perpetrated by individual China during the past year must be added the shooting down of the C.N.A.C. airliner bound from Hongkong to Wuchow and the machine~ gunning of the crew and passengers as they sought to reach the shore of the creek in the Canton delta where the craft landed.
For a year past communication between Hongkong and Hankow has been maintained by the CN.AC. without there being any interference on the part of the Japanese, and, though there is no suggestion that any sort Jof arrangement had been arrived at between the opposing forces regarding the inviolabi~ lity of that air service, a tacit understanding appears to have been' assumed that there would be no such interference. There may not even have been as much as that, but the least that can be said of the situation is that the Japanese, by refraining from taking action against the Chinese civil aeroplanes the past, at least permitted the impression to be formed, that at any rate for the time being these machines would be free from attack. This impression was all the more strengthened by the fact that the Japanese air force could, at practically any time during the past year, have attacked the craft operating on these lines, and the fact that they did not has apparently created a false sense of security which in view of what has happened now, ought never to have been allowed to be created. During all this time foreign dip-Jomatic officials, women and children, foreign newspaper correspondents, and many others who for perfectly good reason would be travelling by these aeroplanes, have made free use of them, and it appears to be only the sheerest good luck that the doomed aeroplane had no other foreigner on board than Mr. H. L, Woods its American pilot, There were foreign officials in Hongkong at the time of the aircraft's departure who might very well have travelled by it, and it is thanks to no action on the part of the Japanese that the whole occurrence does not have a wider international significance than it already has, What was behind the apparent sudden change of the Japanese towards this civilian air line is not known, and in all fairness the possibility of this being done without the foreknowledge and consent of the Japanese igher command must, in view of the peculiar conditions prevailing, always be borne in mind. But there is, somewhere in the Japanese army or naval system. someone directly responsible for orders which led to the destruction of this aeroplane, and the change of policy which it connotates. Was it due to the fact that at one time Mr, Sun Fo, President of the Chinese Legislative Yuan, contemplated travelling by this machine, that the attack was carried out in the hope that he might be on board? That is a possibility which cannot be overlooked, and if indeed it is the correct explanation of this attack on a civil aeroplane, easily to be identified as such, was merely for the purpose of perpetrating a political murder Quite useless from any military point of view. It is not to be believed for one moment that, had the attempt resulted in the death which Mr, Sun Fo has, fortunately, escaped, it would have had any important reaction on the determination of the Chinese Government to continue their resistance of the Japanese invaders, One reason for this sudden departure from a practice accepted for practically a year might very well be that the contintial passage of Chinese offaials between Hankow and the outside world by this route had led to some embarrassment of Japanese plans, and that as a result disruption of this line of communication has become necessary in the eyes of the Japanese. If that is indeed
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.