Hankow, Feb. 18.
WHO last great positional fighting of the present war, before which the battle of Shanghai and the prospective struggle for the Lunghai Railway are expected to pale, will be fought in Hupeh, possibly near Hankow, in the opinion of competent Observers here.
General Chiang Kai-shek, Commander-in-Chief of China's armed forces, hopes to put at least forty divisions into the field for this battle, and is confident that it will be Japan's Waterloo.
A stream of all the most modern weapons of war—heavy guns, tanks, anti-aircraft guns, anti-tank guns, machine-guns and automatic rifles—has been steadily flowing into China from abroad. These weapons are being distributed to the "new army"—reorganized divisions and well-trained new ones emerging from the drill-ground.
If the Chinese are defeated in the France and America, and with new great battle, the Government and the Army will withdraw from Hankow to the mountains in the north-west and the south-west The Chinese will then try to hold the seven provinces of Szechuen, Yunnan, Kweichow, Kwangsi, Shensi, Kansu and Chinghai.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.