The river is now, in effect, carving for itself a new bed in a southeasterly direction, the natural slope of the country, which must bring it into the Hwai River in Anhwei and from there to the lakes near Pengpu, thence to the Grand Canal and thence to the Yangtze opposite Chinkiang.
When that happens, as seems inevitable unless a drought replaces the normal rainy season in China's northwest, the lower Yangtze will be in flood and water from the upper Yangtze will find it difficult to reach the sea and a flood in the Yangtze valley must take place. A disaster probably as bad as that of 1931 may result while the effect on Japanese military operations can be imagined.
Unless a passage by the Yangtze can be smashed, Hankow taken and an annihilating blow to the Chinese armies be delivered very quickly the inevitable result will be the prolan ing of what is already proving to Japan a very expensive war.
Chinese coolies are busy levelling land, digging the surface up, sifting i1 for stones and mixing it with lime and other things to make enormous concrete-like runways, A great deal of aircraft is visible everywhere, specially at Peiping, big bombers being lined up in row:
Kaifeng itself shows some signs of war ravage but not so much as might be expected. Aerial bombardments which is outside the wall, is a shambles, tracks blown to bits and platforms and buildings levelled. Some civilian houses round the station inevitably suffered, as did a nearby theatre. The English cathedral was badly damaged by one bomb which fell some distance from its objective. Baracks outside the city were badly damaged by bombs. The streets of the city are full of conerete shelters, pits dug in the pavements and similar things ready for street fighting.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.