NANKING REFUGEES

Manawatu Times, Volume 63, Issue 45, 23 February 1938, Page 14

NANKING REFUGEES

PROFESSOR AND WIFE Refugees from Nanking before the victorious Japanese armies entered were Professor and Mrs. F. W. Schwinning, who arrived in Australia recently on the Neptuna. Professor Schwinning was technical adviser to the Chinese Government at Nanking, as he is Professor of Metallurgy. “We had a lot of air raids—every day air raids,” said Mrs. Schwinning, “but as our home was in the quarter of the city where the foreign legation was, no bombs came near us. “We had to leave the city before the Japanese entered, and so went by junk down the Yangtze River to Hankow. “Thousands of women and children were streaming out of Nanking; the Government had advi 'd all women and children to leave the big cities and go away out into the country. They could not take much, as they were all so poor. Yet no woman was ever without her wash basin and her tea kettle. “We left Hankow in a special train on Which the Japanese had agreed not to fire. It was covered by flags of different foreign nationalities to protect it, and there were hundreds of British, American and European refugees inside. So we came south to Hong Kong. There was at no time any panic among the refugees.”

Mrs. Schwinning said that the Chinese women are extremely brave and perform an enormous amount of social work for their army. “Madame Chiang Kai-shek arrived in Hongkong at the time we left, so I did not see her. She is idolised by the women of China, and makes many flights across the country, organising social work. The patience of the women is wonderful; they will wait with never a murmur for hours and hours at the railway station, as I saw them do at Nanking. “We left much of our household goods in Nanking, yet we want to go back after the war. We were sorry to leave our servants as they followed us from Nanking to Hangkow.” Professor and Mrs. Schwinning will stay for an indefinite period in Sydney and then go home to Germany before proceeding to Nanking.