"THE TWAIN MEET" From Burma, Sgt. NORMAN SAUNDERS makes a report, in water color and words, of that strangest of highways, Pick's Pike. At this suspension bridge the Road is so narrow and the turn so sharp that a two-and-a-half tonner or a "6x6" can barely negotiate it. The right hand pillar is a daily casualty.
How wrong Kipling was, in the physical sense, when he wrote, "never the twain shall meet." It should be presumptuous of me to reopen the subject at this late date, but with the opening of the Burma-Ledo Road its seems timely, for the twain are meeting at every meter.
That back-home talk of Orientals being enigmas and not standing a Chinaman's chance could well be reversed to fit the Occidental here. Due to his daring and scorn of consequences, a Chinaman's chance is a good one, believe me. The Burma Road carries the world's most unusual conglomeration of wayfarers, and it is the Occidental who had better watch out.
Just where and how the prewar Chinese traveled is problematical. Judging by the number of footpaths and trails jig-sawing over and around these ancient hills, everyone took off in a different direction simultaneously.
No one could accuse the Chinese of having "stood in bed."
Loaded jeeps, Kunming bound, pass a Chinese infantry unit moving up to the Burma front. Their arms are already in the front and their troops rotate in the use of them.
