Tokio, Nov. 15.
When in Tokio, I. made it a special point to go on a pilgrimage to the empty space behind Yokoami, in the Honjo district, where the greatest single tragedy connected with the earthquake occurred, where the souls of more than: 33,000-odd men, women and children, after undergoing horrors that the most sanguine of fiction writers could not have imagined, were rudely torn out of their tormented vestures of decay.
A tram service is being maintained to this spot which will become place of pilgrimage for generations yet to come. There is also an efficient bus service operating. boarded a car crowded with people of both sexes and of all ages, each owe carrying some flowers, which told me plainly that they were all bent on the same errand as I was. The car drove silently on, except for. the monotonous voice of the conductor announcing the stops, a silence that was appropriate and correct when the nature of the journey and its object is taken into consideration.
The spot where this fearful toll of life was taken is an empty space about 20 acres in extent where formerly—many months before the quake—the clothing depot of the Japanese Army had been established. There was no building on it at time of the earth tremors, and this must be borne in mind in order to grasp fully the reason that made thousands regard this open lot as an ideal haven of safety and to understand, to some extent at least, the blows that Fate rained down on the stricken regions, Honjo is known as one of the biggest of Tokio's slums, but not all of those who perished so dreadfully on that evening of September 1, when the sun went down lax crimson flame almost obscured by the smoke of the fires that were ravaging Tokio, belonged to what some, in self-conceit, would call the "ower Glasses."" Bankers,' professors of univers' cultured women educationists, people of independent means, shared the dreadful fate of thousands of workers. Death is no discrinsinator of persons, and on this occasion cut furrows far and deep on every side.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.