'Amazing Statement by Putnam 'Weale: Murder of Mukden War'
Lord a Local Sequence of Recent Political Events Peking, Aug. 14
Putnam Weale (Mr. B. Lenox Simpson), who has been in Mukden for Chang Tso-lin's funeral ceremonies, interviewed by foreign correspondents here to-lay, Rave startling version of the assassination, of the late Marshal.
'After making a close investiga tion on the spot, he asserted, it was his belief that' the murder—was committed by a Japanese secret society, whose work was facilitated By certain people in the Japanese Army,
the siti in Manchuria was Mr, Ween casing that fraught with many possibilities. The conversations between Baron Hayashi and Marshal Chang Hsueh-Yang had been kept secret, but. there was reason to believe ' that they were directed towards determining the velations between Mukden and Nanking and securing the execution of the new railway scheme projected early this year, which was. initialled in Peking before Chang Tro-lin's departure but so far had not been ratified by the Three Eastern Provinces, He believed that the quarrels between Mukden and Japan centred on this railway question.
'A masked struggle, he said, had been going on concerning the new railways which the Chinese were building. If, as the Japanese desired, these railways consolidated with the South Manchuria Railway system, it would establish Japanese paramountcy in North Manchuria as securely as in South. Manchuria, but the Chinese had not ratified the agreement and their Tines now tapped the vich grain-bearing Northern areas and ran to the seaboard, Mr, Weale asserted that Japan's desire to obtain paramountcy la Noxth and well as South Manchuria was the explanation of the constant statement that she was willing churia as an experiment,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.