Japan and the Floods The Yellow River floods have effectively
held up Japan's campaign on the Lunghai Railway and saved Chengchow and, for the moment, Hankow. The floods now cover several hundred square miles of territory, forming a vast inland sea, and half a million °Chinese are homeless. The rains have abated and allowed the Japanese to repair some of the dykes ; but the flood waters are flowing into the Hwai River, which may also burst its banks. Japan has had to transfer her campaign to other theatres. She is now preparing to attack Hankow by advancing up the Yangtze, to invade South China and push her invasion into the eastern half of China up to the frontiers of Indo-China. Thus the predictions made by foreign observers at the beginning of the war, and ignored by the Japanese, who characterised their aggression as a " local incident," are being completely fulfilled. To overthrow Chiang Kai-shek and " bring China to her knees " has meant that Japan must be prepared to conquer the whole vast extent of China. But to win victories is not to conquer China, as events in Shansi have shown. The Southern half of that province is now overrun by between roo,000 and 200,000 Chinese troops, many released by the failure of Japan's campaign on the Lunghai Railway. Japan has made one serious, and perhaps fatal, mistake in engaging in the war. Believing that she was committing herself merely to a military excursion against a militarily weak Government, she has provoked a national revolution which may transform the future of the Far East.
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