Page:A Pocket Guide to China (1943).pdf/38

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with the times is one reason China has been able to live until today. The empire was overthrown and a new republican government was set up, modeled after that of the United States. There has long been a close tie between China and the United States. Many Chinese young men have come to our universities to study and it was only natural that they should take back American ideas. But it is not easy to establish a new government in any coun­try. It took some years to do it in China, all the years between 1911 and 1927, and even then the job wasn’t finished. In the meantime Sun Yat-sen died, and his successor was Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek who in the early days of the Republic had been a brilliant fol­lower of Sun Yat-sen.

Today the Generalissimo holds firmly the leadership of the several groups in Chinese political life. Though these groups differ as widely as political parties in our American life differ, they are united, under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek, in their determination to be free. They have in him the necessary unity to win the war.

CHINA AT WAR

ON July 7, 1937, Japan attacked China. Then, as now, China had little navy and her army was composed of infantry, with few tanks, little artillery, and slight air

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