More alert [than the Chinese-Homer], the Japanese took their cue from Munich. On October 12, two weeks after that day of "defeat without war," as Churchill called it, Japanese troops landed at Bias Bay on the Kwangtung coast 30 miles from Hong Kong. Negligence, corruption and some treachery opened their path and Canton was captured without serious opposition.
The British did not react because they could obtain no assurance of American support if action against Japan should involve them in war. The Chinese felt, according to Ambassador Johnson, "completely let down." In a message to President Roosevelt following the landing at Bias Bay, Chiang Kai-shek urged him to give the British the necessary encouragement for "cooperative intervention" in the Far East. He was not shy about stating his thesis. The problem of Asia, he instructed the President, could only be solved by collective action for which "leadership must come from the United States." That was the American dilemma. The United States was prepared neither to seize the leadership nor to acquiesce in Japanese control of China which must result from failure to seize it.
Barbara W. Tuchman, Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45, p. 194
Good work Homey.