Our road was now easy, except for excess going down with dysentery: troops, good roads (the main ones which had been destroyed to impede the Japanese are all repaired again) and plenty of cheap food and above all liberty to go anywhere at any time gave to the whole of life a very different atmosphere. Here again was the original happy and carefree life of the Chinese peasant, As the rails of the Pinghan were removed and all bridges destroyed between Hsinyang and Chengchow we made the trip direct to Loyang via Lobo by rickshaw and motorbus. Postal buses run on petrol, the rest on petrol-alcohol or charcoal gas. A
miles from Lobo takes two days. On this road, all towns have had their e walls removed and as a consequence the picturesqueness of the usual Chinese landscape has suffered Yet the pertinacity w th which lan has been defended is an inspiration and so the Japanese have never yet linked up the Pinghan, though they have tried three big drives (the third in June 1940 got within sixteen. li of Nanyang) and are now trying again.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.