According to reports received by the Central authorities; the military forces in Szechuen and Hsikang are composed of eight armies comprising 26 divisions,.nine—iüdependent brigades, or a total of 171 infantry regiments—an army two anda half times larger than the Japanese army. With one province having to maintain such a large force, it is small wonder that little attention is paid to military equipment, During the trip of Messrs, Teng Han-hsiang, Chief Secretary of the Szechuen Provincial Government, and Lu Tso-fu, Provincial Commissioner of Reconstruction for Szechuen, to the Capital in March this year, the question of consolidating national defence by nationalizing military forces was discussed.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.