The first war zone (roughly the greater part of Honan, and southern Shensi) contains no less than seven by a London surgeon. It is said to 'e been the house that Barrie had mind when he created the home of Mr. and Mrs. Darling in "The Little White Bird" and "Peter Pan." Fortunately the bomb did nothing wor than break its one window.
As the problem of getting home before pitch darkness sets in becomes more and more urgent. an interesting suggestion is made by Capt. Bernard Acworth, R.N. "Why he says, "should we have any blackout at all?" It does not prevent aeroplanes from finding their way to any predetermined spot, nor from dropping their bombs. It immensely increases the difficulties of salvage work, and of course everything, seems worse in darkness than in light. If bombers succeed in starting a good fire, the value of to them is enhanced by the surrounding blackness. Theoretically the blackout prevents aimed bombing at military objectives. But in fact it has never prevented the RAF. from fleding targets in Germany. And part of Captain Aeworth's argument is that skilful lighting might be used to dazzle and confuse the enemy and even as a sort of camouflage, while work of all kinds would be immeasurably helped.
It is an ingenious and very attrac tive idea. The war has made us. anc our enemies too, realize what the ninth plague meant to the Egyptians. When for "three days" no man stirred from his place. We are being allowed to use larger torches, and the new headlight screens for motor cars let through much more light than the former pattern, But we cannot expect more. The latest order is that buses will stop running at 11 p.m. Quite late enough too. Among our unnamed heroes the drivers and conductors running their buses unch mayed through black and bombs surely take a high place. army corps consisting of some forty odd divisions of Central Government and provincial troops, spread out from the Kansuh-Shensi borders in the west to the borders of Honan and Anhwei in the east. This war zone is under the command of Gen. Wet Li-huang.
It is difficult to give even an approximate estimate of the number of the Chinese forces under arms in north China. In the first place, none of the units into which Chinese armies are divided—army corps, divisions and brigades—are either homogeneous of of a regular standard size. They may vary from anything like one to 10,000, according to the whim of their particular commanders and the demands of time and space. This ap-
Hongkong Official to be Supply Group Secretary New Delhi, Feb. 8.
While Major-Ġeneral W. C. Holden will be officer in charge of the central provision office to be established as a result of the Eastern Group Conference, it is understood that Mr. J. Whyatt, who was one of the advisers to the Hongkong delegation to the cònference, will be the secretary of the Eastern Group Supply Council. Mr. Whyatt has already arrived here—Reuter. plies as much to the units of the Central Government armies, as to the provincial troops. In addition there are in north China considerable Communist forces, with innumerable irregular bands, which are constantly ¢isappearing and re-appearing again. but even taking very low figures in one's estimate of the strength of the Chinese units which are said to be found in these four areas, the total number of the armed Chinese forces still to be found in north China would appear to be not much less than half a million.
What is particularly striking in this review of the Chineseymilitary position, is the admission on the part of the Japanese that there are still such considerable numbers of armed Chinese forces in the two lost territories or in the occupied territory, as the Japanese themselves call it. After 31% years of steady mopping-up, with its pincer movements, steel traps and all the rest, leading to the huge catalogues of killed and of captured booty, one would never have imagined that the Japanese occupation was stil faced with such formidable numbers of enemy. It would seem that, on their own showing, the Japanese have still a long way to go, before they can hope to achieve the complete pacification of north China News and Notes from
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.