893.00/14341
The Chargé in China (Peek) to the Secretary of State 18
[Received March 1.]
Sir: I have the honor to refer to the Embassy’s despatch No. 1541, February 7, 1938,19 reviewing significant developments in China during 1937, and to submit a review for 1938.
Paradoxically, 1938 was a year of disappointment to the Japanese notwithstanding far-reaching military successes. It was a year of widespread, heavy and costly fighting for which they had not originally planned. Because the fall of Nanking (December 13, 1937) did not, as they expected, result in collapse of Chinese military and political resistance, circumstances impelled them to attempt to (1) drive on to Hankow, (2) capture Canton and cut the main channel of Chinese supplies, and (3) cut the channel of supplies from Soviet Russia through Sinkiang and Shensi. The Hankow campaign succeeded only after uncalculated delays and tremendous cost; while the Canton campaign was executed at negligible cost and deprived the Chinese of their main supply channel, it did not bring the Hankow-Canton Railway under Japanese control; and the attempt to penetrate Shensi did not succeed. Nor did the fall of Hankow achieve the objective of smashing the Chinese armies and bringing about Chinese military and political collapse.
Japanese economic and political plans failed to keep pace with military successes. The Chinese Government did not sue for peace. Puppet regimes set up by the Japanese failed to exercise authority beyond places under military control; they lacked suitable Chinese personnel, and establishment of a “central” government was not consummated. Grandiose economic schemes remained in general in embryonic state, partly because Japanese territorial control was restricted, and partly because of lack of finances. Japan’s relations with the United States, Great Britain and France deteriorated because of continuing Japanese interference with the interests of these powers, relations with Soviet Russia worsened, and some observers predicted that international complications might become Japan’s most serious problem. From this point of view Japan was like a man riding a tiger and unable to dismount; her military successes were like a snowball rolling downhill and gathering more difficulties the farther it rolled. Statements by Japanese spokesmen at the end of the year that “Japan is fighting for her very existence” carried a new note of sincerity.
[Page 138]On the other hand, although Chinese long-range defense plans assumed that Japan would occupy most of North China, the coast ports and the Yangtze Valley to Hankow, developments in 1938 left the National Government with tangible resources insufficient for much more than six or eight months, with sources of supplies greatly curtailed, with great diminution of revenues, and with its political and military establishments everywhere subject to aerial attack.
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Military and political aspects of the Chinese guerrilla movement:
Approximately 1,000,000 Chinese guerrillas (units of the 8th Route Army sent behind the Japanese lines, newly recruited units forming allied so-called Communist armies, and reorganized bands of defeated Chinese soldiers) carried on during 1938 sporadic mobile warfare, harassed Japanese lines of communications and isolated garrisons, and operated politically among the peasant population. They engaged in hundreds of skirmishes over widespread areas (the Japanese made three major drives in Shansi and at the end of the year were retaking towns which they had twice before captured from guerrillas and regulars); they operated within a few miles of Japanese military bases such as Shanghai, Wuhu, Nanking and Peiping, attacked Hang-chow, entered Tsinan, Chefoo, Paoting, Paotou; they made innumerable attacks upon Japanese-controlled railways which resulted in temporary disruption of services. Although they were in many ways ineffective (that is, they avoided large battles as a matter of military policy and did not hold towns against strong attack and failed to destroy railways), their methods of warfare put a great strain upon Japanese lines of communication, railway guards and scattered garrisons, and generally prevented the Japanese from consolidating their positions over a vast territory. Their ineffectiveness was due chiefly to lack of ammunition and explosives, lack of training and, probably, the characteristic Chinese lack of will to attack as contrasted with the highly developed Chinese will to resist.
The final measure of the guerrilla movement as a political force lay, at the close of the year, still in the future. Some observers believed that it would die gradually or be eventually “liquidated” by the Japanese. Others considered that it would not only expand militarily but would develop such widespread popular support as to render ineffective Japanese military conquest and defeat Japanese political ends. (The term “Communist” as applied to the 8th Route Army and allied units was a misnomer and was the strongest enemy of the movement among the Chinese middle class, although actually the Chinese Communist Party’s program was not communistic in the Marxian sense, the principle of class struggle for which there is practically no foundation in democratic China was abandoned in [Page 139] 1937, and the main feature of leftist socialism was agrarian reform not differing greatly from the Kuomintang plan.) Among the poorer classes, Japanese actions contributed to the growth of the movement. Japanese atrocities on the non-combatant civil population (bombings, burning of villages, rape of women and shooting of men and children) gained the guerrillas many recruits among survivors. The ironic result was that the Japanese, professedly fighting so-called communism, were, to a limited extent, actually creating that which they were attempting to destroy.
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Respectfully yours,
Counselor of Embassy