Yesterday a man from Hunnim told me that for a few days previous to the Qist of June the Japanese had burnt about thirty villages in the region. The panese approached one village which was specially noted as having never {been accused of any evil. The villagers saw the soldiers coming. They hasten ed to prepare tea and agys to treat the Japanese. A good many went outside of the village to receive them. The soliiers suddenly surrounded about. fifty men and killed them on the spot. The same man told me that on the 21st of June several got passes from the Japanese authorities allowing them to visit a certain district near which the Japanese soldiers had been burning villages. Most of the inhabitants had fled and were afraid to return to their houses. That afternoon one of those who got passes asked a Japanese official if they intended burning any more villages, if not he besought them to put out a proclamation to comfort the people. The result was that on the 22nd of June the Prefect of Hoonim put out a proclamation exhorting all peaceable one to return at once to their homes. Many obeyed, but alas for them! On the 23rd and 24th June soldiers were sent to these villages and burned and killed as before.
"How Loc Regarding the violation of women, it is more difficult to speak simply because it is well-nigh impossible to get at facts. But there is not a man or woman whether English, American, German, French or Chinese but will say Yes, hundreds, por-haps thousands, of women have been violate ed." If all these things had been done in a time of war they might be excused. But have been done and are being done in a time of nominal peace. How long are these unnameable barbarities to be allowed When. men see their crops destroyed, their houses pulled down, their. relatives for little or no reason languishing for months in prison, their os burned, the white bones of their fathers and children lying bleaching in the sun, their wives and daughters violated—when even long-suffering Chinamen see that, is it wonderful that at last they join the ranks of "robbers" and attack the Japanese Soutn Formosa.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.