SIEGE OF NANKING.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 299, 17 December 1937, Page 7

SIEGE OF NANKING.

Streets Strewn With Bodies Of Civilians. CORRESPONDENT'S REPORT. LONDON", December 16. '"Four days of hell' would be the most fitting way to describe the siege and capture of Nanking, which I have just seen,"' says the special correspondent of the '"Daily Mail," Mr. A. T. Steele, who is on board the United States gunboat Oaliu with the first group of foreigners to leave the city since the attack began. "The last thing we saw as we left the city was a band of 300 Chinese being executed before a wall near the waterfront, where the corpses were already piled knee deep. "After the collapse of the Chinese morale the Japanese could have occupied the city without .firing a shot, but they chose instead systematic killing. The vanquished Chinese swarmed toward the river through the Hsiakwan Gate, which quickly became choked. I left by this gate and had to drive my car past heaps of bodies five feet deep. The Japanese guns had done the same thing.

"The streets were strewn with the bodies of civilians and abandoned Chinese equipment and uniforms. Many Chinese soldiers, unable to obtain.boats to cross the river, leaped in to almost certain death."

NORTHERN DRIVE. JAPANESE ' FROM NANKING. (Received 11.30 a.m.) LONDON, December 10. Imperial headquarters at Tokyo announce that 7000 Chinese troops at Lintsing and 8000 at Lungping, both in the Hopei Province, surrendered to the Japanese. Confounding the predictions of foreign observers, the Japanese have begun a new drive north from Nanking, proceeding along three routes with the object of joining up the Japanese forces in North China which at present are on the north bank of the Yellow River. The main column is advancing from Pukow along the Tientsin-Pukow railway and is heading for C'huchow; the right column is pushing north along the Grand Canal, and the left column is pressing on from Ho-Hsien. NORTH CHINA WOOL. PURCHASES BY JAPANESE. TOKYO, December 10. The Kalgan representative of the Domei News Agency reports that eight companies, including the Kanegafuchi, Kanematwu. Mitsui and Mitsubishi, have established an association with a capital of 3,000,000 yen to buy up North Ch ilia wool. The president of the Kanegafuchi intore-' Mr. Tsnda. will be the chairman oi tue association.