Roads Men Live By

Germany and Japan cannot in one convulsion seize all the great land and human masses, all the vast concentrations of productive power which oppose the Axis. But the Germans and the Japanese can try to isolate and choke the world's greatest land mass, Eurasia, where the greatest masses of fighting people, the Chinese and the Russians, block their paths to dominion (see col. 1). They were doing a fair job of choking last week. They were reaching for, and blocking, the land and sea roads by which the war materiel of the Americas reaches the warriors of Eurasia (see map).

China's Roads. Because the Japanese have closed China's coast line, China must breathe through roads and railways leading to unconquered seaports. The Japanese, closing on Rangoon, were closing the entry to China's arterial Burma Road. But China had an alternative. In the wild, peaked plateau where China and India meet, just above invaded Burma, some 20,000 Chinese stonecutters, some 100,000 other laborers blasted, hewed and dug away at a substitute route into India across 10,000-foot peaks, across three great rivers, across many another vast obstacle between Sichang in China and a border railhead (Sadiya) in northeastern India.

Could they finish their incredible task in time? It took hundreds of thousands of laborers two years to build the easier 330-mile stretch to Sichang. But necessity and good pay spurred these laborers; their bosses were the same Chinese geniuses who had created the Burma Road. Perhaps a hopeful Chinese spokesman had that fact in mind when he announced that Chiang Kai-shek in New Delhi had, among other feats (see p. 24), arranged a satisfactory war route from India to China.

Failing supplies via India, China must fall back on two devious, difficult routes from Siberia, across the long reaches of Mongolia and Sinkiang. Truck roads, now built and usable, touch Russia's trans-Siberian railway system at two points. Over these lines recently China has received some of Russia's captured German booty-Mauser rifles, machine guns, antitank and anti-aircraft guns. But Joseph Stalin's own interior war traffic jams his railways, and his outward routes to the United Nations are none too sufficient and secure.

Russia's Roads. Last week there was news of a great, new U.S. supply center on the Persian Gulf. Through the Gulf, and then overland by highway and railway, through renamed Persia to Soviet ports and railheads on the Caspian Sea, the U.S. was sending war goods to Stalin's Armies. Aircraft assembled at the Gulf delivery points were flown directly to Russia. And, as it had already done in Eritrea, the U.S. Army was providing supply bases for future U.S. forces in the Middle and Near East.

From the U.S. and Great Britain, Russia still has a North Atlantic route to Archangel. But this is not enough; it imposes heavy convoy burdens, and Archangel is weather-shut most of the winter.

The Crossroads. Vital life lines lead to and through the Indian Ocean. The Germans and the Japanese have not yet choked off those lines, but they are squeezing hard.

Germany has closed the Mediterranean to regular convoys, is driving at the Suez terminus through Libya. Its spring threats of action in the Caucasus and through Turkey are also threats to the Indian Ocean and its seaways. The Japanese have narrowed the Axis pincers from the east. If the Axis finally shuts the pincers and controls the Indian Ocean, China's hopes of supplies through Russia and isolated India will vanish; the only remaining feasible routes from the U.S. to the Middle and Near East will be lost. Russia would have to fall back on uncertain, insufficient Arctic routes.

Just off Africa, athwart the only Indian Ocean lanes now reasonably open to the United Nations, lies Vichyfrance's Madagascar. If it became a base for Axis warships, submarines and planes, it would give Japan and/or Germany complete control of the Indian Ocean crossroads. Madagascar in Axis hands would be a disaster comparable to the loss of Singapore.

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