“Everybody Knows It But Us”

 

(Continued from Page 1A.)
tality of American civilization to, new government’s long, bloody fight
China’s age-old culture. — for survival.
_ “In my lifetime these American} He was standing on the banks of
people have huilt the greatest em-|the Yangtse river one day in 1911

pire the world has ever seen. Chi-| when he saw a curl of smoke rise
cago, Kansas City, Denver, Seattle,’ from the military barracks on the

 

—

Shanghai two years later when Sun
Yat-sen rebelled against the gov-
ernment of Yuan Shih Kai.

A few years later, when the war
lords were fighting, he was in
Changsha the night the provincial
forces evacuated the city. There
were no lights, no police, no govern-
ment. Everyone was waiting tense
and breathless for the national
forces to enter. He went out at
midnight to see what was going on,
and he came upon a scene which he
has never forgotten.

Old and New China.

On the street in front of a temple
he found a long-whiskered scholar
organizing a home defense force.
Youths stood around armed with

 

 

 

the only weapons they could find—
tritons, halberds, spears and swords.
A boy with a torch stood behind the
scholar and in front of him stood an-

other boy holding up a board from!

which the old man was calling the
roll. Ancient China was carrying on.

The Japanese poured into Man-
churia in 1931, and the next year
they bombed Shanghai. From the
roof of a cotton mill Johnson

watched the bombs crash down.|:

Year after year he followed the gov-

ernment in its retreat.into the in-,

terior, a few miles ahead of the ar-
tillery. The refugees halted in
Chungking, and when he left there
a short time ago the bombs were

 

 

raining rather frequently. One fell

within 200 yards of him.

“But I never felt I was in any

daiiger in China,” Johnson says

F “y, “I fear for my life more in
“fic here in Washington.”