BACK FROM CHINA

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19455, 14 October 1937, Page 4

BACK FROM CHINA

WAR ENDS HOLIDAYS CHINESE RETURN TO N.Z. (Special to the Herald.) AUCKLAND, this day. Passenger vessels arriving at Auckland with transhipments from vessels calling at Australian ports from the East are bringing back to New Zealand more and more persons who have decided to leave the war zones of China for the security of other countries. On board the Wanganella, when it arrived at Auckland from Sydney yesterday, were as many as 28 Chinese returning to New Zealand after holidays in China. All the adults have been resident in New Zealand for varying periods and most of them had been to Canton and its surrounding areas. A taste of war was given some of them, they said, when they were at Canton. Immediately before their departure for Hongkong two flights of Japanese bombing aeroplanes flew over the city from the east and dropped some bombs, though without much damage. The countryside, however, was in the throes of the confusion of war and, though in some of the more westerly districts the effects of hostilities had not yet been fully appreciated, there was plenty of evidence that the war was more and more acting as a .nationalistic influence and driving together sections of the popupation who while being divided in interests and sympathies before, were now realising that only in unity could there be the best hope of security. Some of the Chinese in the Wanganella said that definite information about the fate of members of the New Zealand Chinese community who were in China when hostilities started was exceedingly difficult to obtain. It was possible that some had fallen as casualties of war, though so far as was known all were safe up to about a month ago. In those districts, however, where fighting was at its height, many of the normal civilian lines of communication were in a state of chaos and little definite news could be obtained.