At the present time the war has reached its quiescent stage. The Japanese army has done what in most other cases would be called winning a victory. The battle is accordingly a battle between the Chinese government in the West and the Japanese in the East of China, not with guns or ships so much as with words and with price levels--not for strategic territory, but for the support of the Chinese masses. The Chinese must make it possible for their own people to live successfully and happily. But they have the world's greatest farm problem, a problem of over-indebtedness, sharecropping, soil exhaustion, prices and markets. Japan wanted to prevent the creation of a united China strong enough to take Manchuria back, and to drive the Japanese off the Asiatic continent back to Japan. Japan accordingly took the disastrous and painful step of conquering the world's greatest relief problem--the millions of underfed, undernourished, desperate Chinese farmers. Now she has them. In this light, the Far Eastern conflict takes on a different appearance from the usual picture of China versus Japan. It is a conflict, not merely of one nation against another but of competing governments within the same territory. China is trying to build one way; Japan, another; but they are both building for the same end, control of the Far East, and on the same foundations, the Chinese people. Both Japan and the independent Chinese government are struggling for the mastery of an area which is in the grip of a tragic farm problem. The key to power is the mastery of the problem, not the mastery of the men. The Chinese farmers would welcome Communism, capitalism, or almost any kind of leadership which could guarantee them a good livelihood in return for their long and patient labor. The basic issues are social, technological, and economic, as well as political and military. The Japanese failure in China is not a failure of the economic resources; Japan could have been a weak but adequate economic partner to China. The failure of Japan now leads China to look elsewhere for help. THE UNITED STATES IN CHINESE POLITICS The American Lease-Lend Bill, designed primarily to extend effective aid to Britain, also applied to China. The United States executive was clearly aware of the purposes of Japan, and displayed a temper to thwart them. Secretary of State Cordell Hull, presenting a statement in support of the Bill to the House Foreign Affairs Committee on January 15, 1941, stated: