TSINGTAO NEXT

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19519, 29 December 1937, Page 7

TSINGTAO NEXT

JAPANESE PUSH CHINESE ENTRENCHING DOUBTS OF DEFENCE RETREAT FROM TSINANFU FLAMES GREET INVADERS (Elec. Tel. Copyright—Unitod Press Assn.) (Reed. Dec. 28, 2.30 p.m.) LONDON, Dec. 27. Shanghai reports state that the Japanese are making a bid for the treaty port, Tsingtao, which is directly threatened after the occupation of Tsinanfu. The Chinese are entrenching at Weihsien, an important intervening railway centre, but it is considered that there is little prospect that they will check the Japanese advance. Acting on the advice of the State Department at Washington, Americans are leaving Tsingtao to T morrow for Shanghai. Four days of fighting preceded the fall of Tsinanfu. The cost to the Japanese is said to have been only 120 casualties. It is officially claimed also that when, before retreating, the Chinese set lire to all the important buildings, they included the Japanese consulate general and the headquarters of Genera! Han Fu-Chu, the Governor of Shangtung. When the conquerors entered the entire walled city appeared to be ablaze.

TEST OF ASSURANCES FREEDOM FROM ATTACK AMERICA WAITING (Reed. Dec. 28, 3 p.m.) NEW YORK, Dee. 27. Generally u feeling of satisfaction prevails over the closing of the incident of the sinking of the United States gunboat Panay by Japanese planes near Nanking on December 13. The American people are now content to wait and see whether the promises by the Japanese that there will be no repetition of such attacks *.an be carried out. This attitude is veflected by the New York Sun, which says that the test of the sincerity of the fair words of Japan is in the future. “One of the objects of the campaign in China is to eradicate the prestige of the Western nations among the people of Asia,” says the New York Sun. “This purpose it already has largely accomplished. That it will sacrifice the advantages it has thus gained is an assumption few will readily embrace. Consequently the conduct of the Japanese in China will hereafter be scrutinised even more closely than it has been in the past.”