Evening star., 1938-06-11
St. Bartholomew of the Air

IN the case of nation whose popula-
ion runs into teeming hundreds of
millions, even battle casualties aggregat-
Ing tens of thousands are passed over
without particular notice, so imbedded in
a callous worlds mind is the idea OF the
enthusiastically of China's man power.
Yet reports that the beginning of the
twelfth month Of the war-July 7 will be
its first anniversary-finds an estimated
100000 Chinese already homeless as a
result Of the Japanese invasion illustrate
with irresistible poignancy the magni-
tude of the awful ordeal China is under
going. 1t has become the supreme hor-
ror of our time. In human dimensions
it outStrips all the major tragedies caused
by floods, famines and pestilence, for the
myriads accounted as merely destitute
and vagrant do not include the incal-
culable other hundreds of thousands
killed either in battle or as civilians
caught in the inescapable melee Of war
helpless women and children, the aged
OF both sexes, the infirm and the sick.
The sort of cruel conflict raging In China
respects none that lies in its all-engulhng
and merciless path. The disciples of
Bushido are waging war outrance. They
seem to be inspired by the doctrine at
tributed to one of Germany's famed
apostles of blood and iron, who declared
that the victor should leave the van
quished nothing but eyes to weep with.
Attila the Hun lives again
Americans are just setting their first
ocular evidence of the type of hostilities
to which Japan is now resorting, to bring
a tenacious foe to its knees. BY trans
Pacific clippers there have arrived the
earliest photographs Of the air raids
which for fortnight have been con-
verting Canton into a shambles and a
charnel house. The living generation
has never glimpsed such scenes OF wide
spread and wanton destruction. In de-
hberate, calculated savagery and dev-
astation the carnage is without parallel.
Surveying the cameras evidence of the
ruin and slaughter, one wonders if casu-
atty reports, which seldom underestimate,
are not for once grewsomely wide from
the truth in stating that merely 5000
or 0,000 persons, mostly non-combatants,
are victims of the incessant air raids on
the great port since May 49, More in
dicative OF the proportions of Canton's
agony is the statement that among the
refugees fleeing in panic stricken hordes
into the interior from all directions are
half a million Cantonese alone.
The japanese general staff pleads mill
tary justification for the st. Bartholo-
NEW of the air that is turning the SOUTH
ern metropolis into hideous pyre and
revolving civilized mankind. Though |
strategic ecessities-mainly the impor-
tance of destroying communications for |
transport of munitions to Chiangs |
armies from Hong Kong-are advanced |
in extenuation of the Canton horror, the |
Toxic government cannot hide the fact |
'i'"' ~ 40 essentially oil dCt VI ucSpeId-
ton. The "invincible army" win more
and more ground, push back the. de-
tenders mile after mile, as it may, has |
yet to break the will or crush the re-
sistance of China. Meantime as hell's |
furies continue to be released in pitiless
crescendo, the question which brings
down the curtain in Blockade" story
OF the Spanish civil war just privately
filmed in Washington before a congress
sional audience, may well be raised by
staggered humanity-"Where is the
worlds conscience?"