Land of Three Rivers

Singapore gave Malaya meaning; nearly everyone knew that Singapore was a great naval base. Burma had no Singapore. Burma was a strange place, with strange names, where Japanese invaded, British retreated, and young Americans flew gallantly in the alien sky. Last week, as the battle for Burma ran its course, it was still a remote, uncomprehended struggle to most of the world.

Burma is a land of three rivers: the long, motherly Irrawaddy in the west ; the tired, gentle Sittang in the center; the wild Salween in the east. They rise in the northern hills, where God lives. They all run southward, through Upper Burma to the rice fields of the south, and then into the Gulf of Martaban and the Bay of Bengal.

Who conquers Burma must win the rivers and their valleys. With them go Burma's chief port, Rangoon; the oil of Yanangyaung, on the Irrawaddy ; the ruby and silver mines; 85% of all the precious tungsten in the British Empire; Burma's rubber plantations; the inland cities--Pegu, Prome, Mandalay--where Burmese kings once ruled their separate realms, and the British were never quite at home.

Japanese strategy was first to seize the estuaries. The invaders drove from Siam into extreme Lower Burma, and then around the Gulf of Martaban to ruined, abandoned Rangoon.

After Rangoon, the battle for Burma was a struggle to keep the Japs in the south, at the river mouths. In the spring, the south is a grey, heat-beaten land, where only the rivers are cool and even the wide rice paddies gape with cracks in the baking earth. It is a time when prudent men, fools, even Englishmen stay out of the midday sun. But the Japs fought in the sun, and drove the British steadily up the Irrawaddy and Sittang valleys. Then the Chinese came down from the north.

The British and Indians concentrated on the Irrawaddy front. The Chinese took over the Sittang--and, later, when the Japs opened a flanking drive along the Salween in the east, that front as well.

By last week, the Chinese had pretty well taken over all three fronts. Like the British, they lacked air support and tanks ; they had to retreat. But one good thing had come out of the battle for Burma.

After long, bitter weeks of misunderstanding, Chungking reported that the Chinese had at last reached an understanding with Great Britain's General Sir Archibald Wavell. King George conferred the Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath on Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek. The Chinese now feel free to send additional troops into Burma. There they fight under their own commanders, who are in turn responsible to Chiang Kai-shek's Chief of Staff, U.S. Lieut. General Joseph W. Stilwell.

Not Many Men. It was never a battle of great numbers. The biggest body of British troops reported in the retreat from Rangoon was 1,000, and they had with them all the British mechanized equipment in Burma. The largest British force reported in action last week was 7,000. There were also a few thousand Indian troops, and two or three battalions of native Burmese riflemen, who were the exceptions to the Burmese natives' general indifference or hostility. The R.A.F had very little in the air at the start, practically nothing after a few weeks of combat. Because the Jap advance threatened the Burma Road to China, Chiang Kai-shek detailed his American Volunteer Group to Burma's air defense. The A.V.G. destroyed scores of Jap planes, but lost its own as well. By last week the A.V.G. was using any old crate at hand. Finally, the Japanese faced not more than three divisions of Chinese infantry, perhaps 40,000 men.

What Is Left? Southern Burma is gone. The oilfields around Yenangyaung are gone. The coast whence the Japs can move across the Bay of Bengal to India is largely gone. But the Allies still have something to fight for in Burma.

The mere existence of a fighting force in upper Burma is invaluable to the defense of India. If they have an active enemy in their rear, the Japanese cannot complacently advance on India.

Burma is a gateway to China's roads. If the Japs drive on to Mandalay--they were only 75 miles away early this week--and successfully entrench themselves in all northern Burma, they will have a new front on China's borders. But Jap conquest of Burma is mainly dangerous to the Chinese because of the great new land routes abuilding from India into China. The Japs choked off the Burma Road when they won Rangoon; if they win access to the northern roads, they might all but choke China.

Yet China might still not be altogether cut off. The U.S. is now equipping a great air-transport line, to fly war goods from India to China. The Japs were never able to ground China National Aviation Corp. by air attack. C.N.A.C.'s best pilots are helping to establish the India-China service, and they think that it can be maintained and steadily increased, unless the Japanese capture the bases at both ends.

What Next? Early May brings the rains to Burma. Southern Burma will be a green, cooled land for the invaders. Its rice paddies will be lakes, many of its roads will be bogs. But the best roads will still be usable, for bringing up supplies to the troops in the north. So will the Rangoon-Mandalay railroad; so will the rivers, except when they are flooded. In the north, where the fighting is headed, the monsoon will not halt combat. If the monsoon has any real military effect, it will be in the Bay of Bengal. In monsoon time the Bay and its air are stormy and perilous.

The defenders of India are doubtless aware by now that nature and geography are uncertain allies. It was once an accepted fact that the mountainous borderland between Burma and India was impassable to armies--that the only practical route to India was by sea and air. Yet refugees from Burma filtered through those same mountains, 1,000 and more a day. The mountains which overlap eastern Burma and Siam were also supposed to be well-nigh impassable. Last week Japanese tanks from Siam wormed through the lower ranges, in dark prediction of what they may do on the road to India.

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