Hankow, Mar. 13.
A new strategic drive to encircle and annihilate the Japanese forces now operating in Shansi has been worked out by General Chiang Kaishek and orders have already been given for it to be put into effect, it is learned, The first part of this plan has been to send reinforcements to the Chinese defenders of the south bank of the Yellow River and to give these defenders orders to hold the Japanese advance into Honan at all costs.
At the same time the Chinese forces operating on the Peiping-Hankow railway have been ordered to advance in two directions: one column to push west into Southern Shansi where the Japanese investiture is very thin; the other column to push up north along the railway and then veer west to cut the Japanese retreat.
At the same time, Chinese reinforcements have been drafted into Shensi to hold the Japanese advance on that flank and, if possible, push the Japanese back.
The plan to encircle the Japanese is completed by orders that have been sent to the Chinese forces Brilliant Speech Made by M. Bukharin Moscow, Mar, 12.
Eighteen of the 21 political prisoners on trial for their lives before the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court were sentenced to death here to-day on charges ranging from plots against the lives of high Soviet leaders to attempts to overthrow the Government.
The only three defendants to escape the death penalty were Prof: D. D. Pletnev, heart specialist; M. Christian. Rakovsky, former President of the Ukraine; and M, S. A. Bessonov, former Counsellor of the Soviet Embassy in Berlin.
Those sentenced to death included:
M. Nikolai Bukharin, former President of the Internationale and editor of the "Izvestia"; M. H. G. Yagoda, former head of the Political Police; Y. Rosengolts, former Commissar of Foreign Trade; M. Grigori Fyodorovich Grinko, former Commissar of Finance; M. N. N. Krestinsky, former Vice-Commissar of Foreign Affairs under M. Maxim Litvinov; M. Mikhail Alexandrovich Chernov, former People's Commissar of operating inside Shansi to collect in the north of the Province and pus down south. The whole movement is designed to be completed within a fortnight. Hankow is optimistic as to. the success of the new strategy.—Reuter.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.