All this confusion is an indirect result of the Japanese corridor stretching from Tsingtao to Tsinan, because this strip is a veritable no-man's-land. The Japanese do not profess to police it although their aeroplanes patrol it from time to time, and in this zone,—forbidden to the Nationalists—these arm-fed ovenerless bands come with imusing it-as a kind of re-
'They sometimes come up to the very walls of cities near the railway, and occasionally the Japanese will' chare them a dozen miles or 0 as they recently did near Chow-
'The roads in the eastern half of Shantung are becoming unsafe, that goods cannot be moved away' from the railway.
From Chinese sources we hear, however, that one department of trade is' outishing. dts the trade in arms and ammunition. This going on in Tsinan and several other places. thus these marauding bands' keep themselves supplied. 'They fleeced one city of $10,000 which they' brought up to Tainan and spent on sinews of war.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.