The Strategy of the Sino-Japanese Conflict

IN THE planning of a war or of a campaign, the determination of the political objective to be attained is the decisive act of judgment, as the greatest of all military theorists, Clausewitz, puts it. The difficulty of appraising the strategy of the present Japanese war on China lies precisely in the fact that after months of fighting its political purpose, and consequently its fundamental strategy, have only begun to be defined. For whatever the interpretation put upon the political significance of the conflict, one thing seems to have emerged quite definitely, and that is that neither Tokyo nor Nanking-for different reasonswished for a clash at this juncture. Both sides were rushed into it by the men on the spot. The most outstanding feature of the conflict, on the side of the Japanese, whose positive objective and superior offensive power have determined the strategy of the campaign, has been the improvised manner in which the military and naval authorities, themselves originally taken by surprise by the action of the Japanese North China Army, mobilized and dispatched troops, directing their movements as the military exigencies of the moment and the continuously expanding political purpose of the conflict demanded. The political intention seems in the beginning, up to the outbreak of fighting in Shanghai in the middle of August, not to have gone beyond a local punitive action, though aimed, it is true, at reaffirming once and for all Japan's political control of the two provinces of Chahar and Hopei. When the outbreak of fighting around Shanghai definitely transformed this local affair into a general struggle, the Japanese aim expanded: first into a plan for the emancipation of the five northern provinces of Hopei, Chahar, Suiyuan, Shansi and Shantung, and then into an attempt to force the Chinese Government to renounce forever all anti-Japanese activities and aspirations. It was only when Chiang showed his determination to fight on, even after the fall of

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