August, 1939
T H E K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S
296
^
China in Transition By CHARLES A. ROBERTS, Changsha, Hunan, China
Illustration by Ransom D. Marvin not a few men and women and children are among the debris. Some will never again be able to speak a word of pro test against this bombing of their civil ian rights. There is no life in them. I crawl over the horrible mess. The fire men have arrived and are struggling with the furious fires—Incendiary bombs do that. And I get to the American Mission to find that the missionaries are safe, although one bomb actually dropped in their compound very near their residence. It is the same story of many a bomb ing in China today. And mission com pounds do not seem to get exemption these days. This month the American Embassy has protested four such bomb ings! What have we done? Dear friends, in case it has not been called to your attention, 52 per cent of the raw materials going to Japan to be used in this “China Incident” comes from the United States of America.
What shall we say then? Today the American Mission is bombed. Aiid over half of the damage is due to stuff from home. Tell me, friends, what have we done? What of China’s Future? But whither China ? Whither the young China that we had so optimis tically looked forward to see bud forth into a big blossom? We can only hope fully await the verdict of the coming years that all will be well. If we com pare China’s existence in the light of the fate of the nations that were her -contemporaries, and which have long since decayed, she may be said to be the only durable nation in the world. And surely conquests cannot destroy such a nation as this. China is very old, and her civilization is very worn, but the slow yet significant changes during the past two or three decades, and including the present “China Inci-
ODAY C h a n g s h a was again bombed.. For a long while we have not had planes flying over our city, and I suspect we were a bit careless today when the alarm went off. At eleven-thirty in the morning and there you are, two planes only, but they circle the city for half an hour and we wish they would proceed on their way. But no! “Swish, swish, swish.” We hear it distinctly from where we stand, so close, are the bombs coming, jj Then a thud, an explosion, and fire! I rush to our roof top, and I see a cloud of smoke in the direction of the American Church Mission. The moment the planes turn away from the city, I jump into the car and race to the spot to see whether the friends there are safe. I get within a .few yards of the location, and a polite policeman with a drawn revolver puts up his hand. I cannot proceed farther. Burning timbers, collapsed housesr and
Made with FlippingBook Online newsletter