To the Editor of the moral devastation is even more appalling than the material ruin. "I can Said Bishop Vu-pin, "return io my diocese while it is under Japanese domination.
If that is to be its fate, I shall remain a Bishop in exile. "Exile is preferable to life under the invader."
He has been called the Mercier of China; and frankly glories in the name, quoting some of Cardinal Mercier's famous utterances. AS Cardinal Mercier represented more or less the official attitude of Belgium during the World War, so Bishop Yupin voices more or' less official! What China has to say about ti present conflict. He feel it hi sacred duty to present this mesa; to the world, particularly to Me people of the' United States.
Japan cannot conquer China, despite hur tremendous military advances. The reason for this not only China's immense size, her 450,000,000 people who simply swallow up the invader and overwhekn him with their sheer multitude; but also China's youth, the new China., Young China, in the Bishop's description, has been formed in a new school whic has been completely transforming the life of that vast Empire. works, the battle against opin its deny social reorganizati modern basis, tion, are only a symbol of a moral transformation that has aroused Chinese youth with a fever of enthusiasm and steels them with a terrific determination to resist the invader to the last ditch.
Japan contends now with a new Chinese people, not the China of thirty years ago, with a new psychology, "presenting a far different problem from the corrupt easygoing functionaries and cowardly ago. The result of the war will be military (of a couple, of generations Japan's own ruin in the end, To the question: "Is Communism the issue?" the Bishop offers a decided "No." The Chinese people. he insists. have been fighting Communism for the last eight years. Under the leadership of Chiang Kaishek, they had practically driven Communism out of China, they had banished it to a corner of remote Shansi Province. Had China been left undisturbed, Communism would have become entirely a thing of the past as far as China is concerned There is a fundamental antagonism between the Chinese character and Communism.
The Communism issue, in so far as raised by Japan. Bishop Vu-pin frankly regards as insincere. -The invasion of China he attributes to the psychology of a certain group in Japan who are animated not by hostility to China or the Chinese. as such. but by an Imperialist madness. which sweeps down everything that stands in its path. This psychology he considers not to be China's problem alone, but that of the world. "How can the world be indifferent," said the Bishop, as he leaned forward to Father Talbot and myself in the quiet of the Editor's office, and tapped ces in turn with his ringed "How can the world be indifferent to the fate of three-quarters of the human race?" "And," he continued. "if the anti-Communist bloc in Europe seek to reinforce Japan by military aid. they are simply driving China into the arms of Communism. They are playing Soviet Rus timate game; and under the pretense of fighting Communism are consigning to Bolshev¢m not nly China's youth, but Indo-China and India and the whole of Asia in turn."
To the blunt question, whether he would wish the United States to military pressure to bear on he answered with another But he did favour some sort of non-military pressure. since if any such were exerted, Japan could not continue her attacks, What China, in the Bishop's sta ment propos to Japan is to exer-not domin the thong for whom deepest he Bishop But thè but to Japan also, indeed extinction to Tapan and disest the rest of the world. tosa John LaFarge, s.s.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.