ENGLISHWOMAN MISSIONARY

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXII, 22 December 1938, Page 5

ENGLISHWOMAN MISSIONARY

TO RAISE ARMY OF CHINESE BANDITS FORMER KIDNAPPERS PROMISE TO HELP j fiv Air Mail—Hueciat CorresDonrtpnr' LONDON, 3rd December. | An Englishwoman missionary in London is planning to raise an army of Chinese bandits to fight the Japanese. She is 48-vears-old Mrs Esme Maynard, who 3 years ago was captured and held for ransom by the bandits. “I was going up the Yangtse in a small river-boat to a Chinese village, when we were attacked by bandits,” sfie said this week. “I was bound and carried off to the bandits’ mountain retreat. Suddenly I had an idea. I would pretend to be dead. There were two sacks of rice flour in the cave, and when I was left alone I covered myself with the flour so that I had a deathly pallor. I cut my wrist on a jagged piece of rock to make it look as if I had committed suicide. "My trick worked. My guard took one look at me and went out screaming that I was dead. Bundled into an old sack and thrown across a horse I was carried for hours. When I thought I was really going to die under the strain I was taken off the horse and dumped into a sack of potatoes. Eventually I forced my way out of the sack to find myself on a railway line. I stopped a ti'ain and got to safety. “In some way the bandits heard of my escape, and one day, when I was up country, the chief called on me and swore that for my bravery his band would always be at my service. “Now I am going back to China to ask them to keep their promise to me and fight for the freedom of their countrymen against the Japanese.”