Foreign News: Challenge

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Chinese unity, frayed but not completely broken during eight years of retreat and defeat, seemed about to snap under the impact of victory.

On the day of Tokyo's surrender offer, Yenan's able commander in chief, General Chu Teh, rushed an order to his Communist armies: they must take over the arms of all "enemy troops" in their zones of operation. They must also take over all "administrative matters in Japanese-and puppet-occupied cities, towns and communication centers. . . . Any sabotage and resistance against the above measures will be treated as treason."

This was an open challenge to the Central Government. Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek met Yenan's defiance with a crackling reassertion of his acknowledged (but nominal) authority over all China, Free and Communist. To General ChuTeh he wired: Communist forces "must remain in their posts and wait for further directions. . . . To maintain the dignity of Government mandates and abide safely by decisions of "the Allies, all our troops are warned hereby never again to take independent action."

Cried an anonymous Yenan "commentator" : Generalissimo Chiang was guilty of an "out-and-out attempt to instigate civil war. . . ." General Chu Teh's troops had "the right to send their representatives directly to participate in accepting a Japanese surrender by the Allies, in the military control of Japan, and in the coming peace conference. . . ."

The issue of civil war hung precariously in the balance.

Unfolding Hand. The swift advance of Russia's armies in Inner. Mongolia, Manchuria and Korea brought another political force to the fore. The Yenan-sponsored "Korean Independence League" (hitherto less prominent than other Korean exile groups in Chungking and Washington) suddenly emerged. It proclaimed:

All Koreans in the Japanese Army should desert, "carrying their arms along," to the Communists. "Koreans should rise up immediately . . . fight their way back to Korea . . . build up a new democratic Korean republic. . . ."