DUNCAN ARRIVES.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 49, 28 February 1927, Page 7

DUNCAN ARRIVES.

Birkenhead Explains Britain's Stand. TEOOPS ESSENTIAL. (British Official Wireless.) (Received 12 noon.) RUGBY, February 27. The situation in Shanghai is more tranquil. Press reports state that the precautionary military measures taken by the British have had a marked moral effect. Major-General Duncan, Commander-in-Chief, arrived yesterday on the Megantic, together with the General Staff and two infantry battalions. Sixteen hundred Home troops crept along the British wharf in darkness, following a record trip from Singapore. The speeding up was on account of a change for the worse in the local situation. Shanghai harbour is fast being congested with transports, warships and the usual coastal and overseas shipping. All the British troops arriving parade the main streets of the International Settlement prior to billeting. Lord Birkenhead, in a speech at Birkenhead yesterday, said the Government had decided a month ago whether their countrymen were to suffer under existing conditions in China. They knew a battle must take place within 100 miles of Shanghai, and they had seen from recent developments there that it was certain that whichever side won, fugitives from the defeated army would fall back in violent confusion upon Shanghai. They had also seen by far too many "illustrations of what _ either fugitives or undisciplined military would do when they found themselv-i in a British community. Shanghai included some thousands of British people and great sums of money had been invested there under the protection of treaties solemnly guaranteed in order to carry on business, encouraged equally by the Government of China as by the Government of Great Britain. Reasonable and moderate precautions for protecting that community from being destroyed and their property from being looted became essential, and the 'only° possible course was taken when the Government decided to send a force which British representatives on the spot deemed necessary for that purpose.