From Our Special War Correspondent, General Kamio's Camp, Nov.
I doubt whether any war corres. pondent has ever witnessed a more awe-inspiring sight than I have watched for the past two days, the bombardment of Tsingtao by sea and land. Yesterday was the Emperor of Japan's birthday, and the sun rose in a cloudless sky to an overture of as heavy a collection of guns as modern warfare has produced. The hour had struck.
One had been on the qui viv for days before and had put a cross against the 3ist just because it was the Emperor's birthday. When therefore, on the morning of the 30th, the place from which I write began in a quiet, at first hardly noticeable, way to empty, one knew for certain that one was on the eve of the general bombardment. By the afternoon General Kamio and his staff had vanished: by the evening the village was practically deserted, Half-a-dozen words spoken in thatch-roofed, mud walled rooms and the headquarters of a large army broke up and moved els-where, swiftly,—noiseles pletely. A placid sunset empty streets. The finality of kept one awake, 'A Spectacular Beginning.
The utmost tip-top of Prince Heinrich mountain was, of course, the only place to make for. Would they one go? That was the question which kept penetrating one's wonder at the events of th" day like the stab of a headache, Long before it was light, one was up and ready. The morning began spectacularly. Before the roar of the cannonading ad rolled towards us for half an hour, two dense columns of smoke quite close to one another rose in the neighbourhood of the Grosser Hafen and spread umbrella-shapd over the sky. The Asintic Petro-Team Company's oil tanks or those of the Standard Oil? Was it either, both or something else that, had caught fire?) The European military attaches, bent in a semi-circle over maps, said one thing; the Japanese officer detailed to escort me and an American correspondent, who has arrived in the nick of time, doubted it. "En avant," exclaimed the French attache mounting; and keeping in two parties we trotted out of camp.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.