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convenient to sit on if the ground were wet, and of a consistency not uncomfortable when used as a pillow: the other a rain cape, as issued to the Indian Army. These capes are cut amply so as to cover the whole of one's accoutrements. They are reasonably long, and as the material is stout, they are wind-proof, and help to retain warmth on a cold day. They are excellent to wrap up in before lying down to sleep. With these two items, one could face most things, even the discomforts of travel in war-torn China.
Tianmushan 1942-42
The officials of the Chungking government had been watching the Shanghai puppet show with close interest. I suppose, at the time of Munich, had one asked the average citizen of Czecho-Slovakia what he thought of the British, he would have replied that he thought they were pro-German. In the same way the Chinese in Chungking, influenced by the Shanghai spectacle, concluded that there was a strong pro-Japanese faction in Britain. That was very unfortunate, because it reinforced Chinese suspicion of British motives, a suspicion rooted in a fallacious interpretation of history and nourished by Kuo Min Tang teaching.
Britain was at war with Germany for one and a half years, alone. Mr. Churchill, quite rightly, in those reports he presents from time to time to the House of Commons, reminds the world of it. China was at war with Japan for four and a half years, alone; and although from about the summer of 1941 the Japanese have concentrated their attention elsewhere, so that the war in China for long periods subsequently was only passive, and did not therefore involve active exertion at the level which throughout has been demanded of the British, yet we can fully appreciate Chinese feeling and the expectation that the extent of China's travail should be recognised.
I was staying at Tennis Court Flats, the name given to a temporary wooden building erected on the Embassy tennis court to accommodate part of the staff, after the British Embassy had been damaged by bombing. I was having breakfast upstairs on the verandah when the first vague reports of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour arrived. As further reports came in from Hongkong and Manila the situation became clearer. In the evening I went for a stroll in the streets. The dense population of Chungking, packed between river and hill, had no facilities for sport, the idea of which indeed was unknown to the mass of the people.