General Hata, the new Japanese commander-in-chief's declaration that the Japanese Army is ready and willing to ce-operate in the rehabilitation of the areas in Central China which "have been devastated in the Sino-Japanese hostilities, provided a- government exists which is friendly to Japan end opposed to communism is set up, can be taken as a gesture in the right direction. That js\about all, For it will be many years before the average Chinese forgets that the parties responsible for the devastation were the Japanese themselves—not the Communists, or any, other party, however much they might have Wsired the same end had they had the power to accomplish it. General Hata's "if" is a big one, and it is to be doubted whether there are any Chinese with the requisite amount of sincerity to please the Japanese who can at the present moment consent to it. Ca-operation, as the word implies, needs mutual action by at least two parties. That postulates a certain amount of yielding on both sides. And this is just where the Japanese proposals for ce-operation would appear to be weakest; for they indicate no willingness for yielding on the part of Japan but, on the contrary, an insistence on concessions by the Chinese. The cost of peace on either side in this "undeclared war" must be enormous, and it is, therefore, useless to suggest conditions which can only be acceptable to the Chinese
yet. government when it is beaten—which is not
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.