Following on the heels of the recent arms scandal in Siberia, when it became established that certain military officials secretly sold and gave away considerable quantities of arms and ammunition to the "White" Russians and to Chang Tso-lin, comes a report, also published by the "Kokuwmin," the! paper which first exposed the Vladivostok episode, that the! Japanese gendarmerie in Shantung have supplied the bandits there with a large amount of smal}arms and ammunition. Serious allegations are made by the paper, amongst these being that the Japanese guards fraternized with the Chinese bandits to such an extent that the leader of the bandits and his immediate following were the guests of honour" at a banquet given by the Japanese gendarmes at a tea-house in Tsingtao and, at the end of the feast, arrangements were made for deli-yering the arms. The paper states that the militarists are sorely vexed at having had to get out of Siberia and Shantung, and the reason for prolonging the bandit atrocities and putting obstacles in the way of China's administration of the Shantung peninsula is to be able later on to tell the Japanese public that the presence of Japanese armed forced in Shantung was necessary in the interests of the commerce of this country.
The Minister for War' has telegraphed to the commander of the Japanese garrison at Tsingtao to make a full and_ searching inquiry and to degrade and immediately send back all responsible for the alleged trafficking in ucms. Other papers referring to the r cent reports of the bandits pla ning to loot Tsingtao on December 2, the date originally fixed for the departure of the Japanese troops from the province of Shantung, state that it was done in conniyance with the gendarmerie. It was later postponed at the request, it is alleged, of the gendarmerie, as the date for the departure of the Japanese troops had been postpone ed. Reports appear in the Tokio press from Japanese merchants in Shantung to the effect that the bandits are looting and plundering in the neighbourhood of Shantung, almost within a rifle shot's distance of the Japanese headquarters, but that the Japanese gendarmes adopt an unconcerned attitude. The public generally believe that the allegations are well-founded, though the newspaper accounts are rather exaggerated. A attack on the Government with regard to the recent trafficking of arms in Siberia and the present alleged fraternizing with outlaws to the extent of supplying them with lethal weapons belonging to the Japanese nation is being pre-{pared by Opposition members of the House of Parliament when the 1 Diet meets this month.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.