Approaching Floods

Should this operation be successful, the Japanese will scarcely be able to advance any further before the approaching floods of the Yangtze and the Yellow River. To advance towards Hankow with the small forces they have at their disposal would be madness, therefore it is more likely that they will use the period of enforced inaction to . consolidate and organise the occupied territories and seize Chinese ports through which supplies still reach the armies of Chiang Kai-Shek. The occupation of Amoy may be the beginning of an advance on Canton, yet these would be only auxiliary operations, the principal being on the vital Lunghai railway, for until its terminus Sianfu is secured by the Japanese, they will be unable to separate China from Soviet Russia.