No Northern Peace

The South Chinese are short, voluble, emotional, but the North Chinese are tall, silent and stubborn. In 1928 the then newfangled Chiang Kai-shek Government changed the name Peking (Northern Capital) to Peiping (Northern Peace). The farmers in the neighborhood did not like the Chiang Government and so they refused to call the city by its new name.

But nine years later the Japanese arrived, and soon changed the name back to Peking. The farmers, who now liked Chiang and hated the Japanese, proceeded to change their minds and call the city Peiping.

These farmers hate what the Japanese have done to their historic city. Ten years ago there were some 2,000 Japanese in Peking; now there are 60,000. They run everything. Behind every Chinese shopkeeper stands a breath-sipping Japanese "adviser." By squeeze and by theft the Japanese have drained the area of every commodity, so that prices have tripled. Greatest machine of exploitation has been the North China Development Company (capitalization: $105,000,000), which got control of everything from telegraph offices to coal mines. They ground Chinese cotton farmers so hard that many stopped growing cotton: production fell from 853,120,000 Ib. in 1937 to 173,290,000 two years later.

Foreign enterprises have been discriminated against. By currency manipulation the Japanese increased their share of the important egg export market from 5% last year to 80% this, of walnut meat, another important item, from 2% to 60%. By intimidation they have gained practically the entire bulk of another important export commodity--bristles.

But the North Chinese are still stubborn. For the past year they have found resistance too costly. Whenever they cut a railroad line, the Japanese wiped out a whole village. But in recent weeks the grasping Japanese have smelled opportunity in the South Seas, and have moved troops from North to South China, rashly weakening garrisons in the occupied areas.

Three weeks ago the famed Eighth Route Army, rallying bands of tough farmers, went to work. By last week the Japanese Army admitted "considerable embarrassment," which is Japanese for plenty trouble. Guerrillas had cut the Peking-Hankow and Shihkiachwang-Tai-yuan Railways. They had captured and destroyed Japanese busses and trucks on the Peking-Tientsin road. And they had ensconced themselves in the beautiful Western Hills--not 30 miles from the city they stubbornly call Peiping.

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