onduct of their war.

After the great initial successes of Hitlerite Germany in 1939-1941,
Japan became convinced that the time had come for a decisive blow
against the positions of the Western European powers and the United
States in the Far East. Lightning blows were struck at Hong Kong and
Singapore, at French Indo-China, and at the Netherlands East Indies. The
American navy seemed to have been eliminated by the attack on Pearl
Harbour, and one group of islands after another fell into the hands of
the Japanese. Japan was at the gates of India and Australia. Russia was
carrying on a desperate defensive struggle against the Axis, and there
was no reason to expect any intervention from her in the Far East.
Greater East Asia seemed assured against every danger.

The situation of Chiang Kai-shek's Chungking government seemed hopeless.
Even the Burma Road was cut, and supplies could only be sent by air;
there was shortage of everything. With immense energy small industries
were begun all over western China, often organized as co-operatives;
roads and railways were built--but with such resources would it ever be
possible to throw the Japanese into the sea? Everything depended on
holding out until a new page was turned in Europe. Infinitely slow
seemed the progress of the first gleams of hope--the steady front in
Burma, the reconquest of the first groups of inlands; the first bomb
attacks on Japan itself. Even in May, 1945, with the war ended in
Europe, there seemed no sign of its ending in the Far East. Then came
the atom bomb, bringing the collapse of Japan; the Japanese armies
receded from China, and suddenly China was free, mistress once more in
her own country as she had not been for decades.

Chapter Twelve

PRESENT-DAY CHINA

1 _The growth of communism_

In order to understand today's China, we have to go back in time to
report events which were cut short or left out of our earlier discussion
in order to present them in the context of this chapter.

Although socialism and communism had been known in China long ago, this
line of development of Western philosophy had interested Chinese
intellectuals much less than liberalistic, democratic Western ideas. It
was widely believed that communism had no real prospects for China, as a
dictatorship of the proletariat seemed to be relevant only in a highly
industrialized and not in an agrarian society. Thus, in its beginning
the "Movement of May Fourth" of 1919 had