Hankow, Jan. 8.
IHE Lunghai Railway promises to be the scene very shortly of the biggest battle of the Sino-Japanese war.
The strongest defence works in the whole of China have been built there, construction having begun after the Mukden Incident in September, 1931.
Two Japanese armies, one from the north and one from the south, are now fast converging on Hsuchowfu, the strategic city at the junction of the Lunghai and Tientsin-Pukow railways. The army from the north is at present nearing Lincheng, notorious for the hold-up of the Blue Express in 1923 by Chinese bandits, who kept more than 20 Britons and Americans captive for about a month.
1 General Li Tsung-jen, the famous Kwangsi commander, has mustered an army of about 100,000 troops to stem the Japanese onslaught. At least four crack Kwansi divisions are at present concentrated in the vicinity of Hsuchowfu. One of these divisions was recently sent to Tsingtao to defend the port, but it returned to Hsuchowfu following the Government's decision to evacuate Tsingtao.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.