WAR IN SHANGHAI

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 257, 29 October 1937, Page 11

WAR IN SHANGHAI

FACING EMERGENCIES THE PROBLEM OF FOOD ENGLISHWOMAN’S PART Conditions in Shanghai at the en 9 of August are vividly described in a letter to the Young Women’s Christian Association in New Zealand from Miss Eleanor M. Hinder. Miss Hinder is in charge of the factory inspection work for the municipality of Greater Shanghai, and has been appointed to represent China at the International Labour Conference in Geneva next June. Miss Hinder says that the first the emergency committees planned by the Shanghai Municipal Council was called together on August 22, anc she was placed on the fuel and fooc committee. It was early apparenl that some steps would have to b< taken to safeguard the rice supply fot the Settlement itself. It was evident that the source of supply from the interior would be cut off, and the set* tlement has no granaries. The fooa committee recommended that it would be necescsary to import rice from Saigon, and three cargoes amounting in all to 7000 tons were ordered. Safeguarding the City “This committee’s work,” write! Miss Hinder, “is typical of that which other emergency committees have been doing—plans to safeguard the city’s water and electricity supply in the event of either the power plant or the water works or the mains bein’? put out of action by the bombing or shelling which has been daily occuiring; consideration of the possibilities of the use of gas and the laying in of stocks of antidotes; a committee watching the financial situation, most precarious in the first few days when banks closed and no cheques would be accepted, all shops demanding cash which was unobtainable; plans for bringing in of coal for the power plant, and a thousand and one other things. Now, after two weeks, we are beginning to feel the pinch. Fresh fruit has given out, and there will be no more coming in. All ships have ceased to call at the mouth of the river even.” Bombing of Railway Station Miss Hinder describes as “perhaps the most dastardly attack of all,” the bombing by the Japanese of the South railway station on August 29. “It meant/’ she says, “the senseless sacrifive of hundreds of lives of poor refugees, who had waited for days to get a train that would take them out of the war-zone. I think I shall never forgive this crime against humanity. “We are in for a long struggle. Death stalks abroad. It is impossible for th® people to keep in off the streets. The crowding is unbelievable. It all adds to the strain, and will not materially lessen. Truckloads of refugees are continually being brought in from stricken areas. There is a great oppression in these so great numbers, quite apart from the dangers of the war itself. As you will realise, provision of the people’s food is essential if we are to avoid internal rioting, “possibly as great a danger as from the war itself.”