With reference to the change of guard, several of the captives write to the effect that they are better than the previous ones. They are more foolish. and lazy, but better to deal with," says Mr. Gensburger. Major Pinger and Mr. Powell also comment on the change, but declare that the men are more intelligent and satisfactory in every way.
The Interrational Commission of Inquiry has finished taking evidence and is now preparing its report. It is understood that there is no reason for suspecting that the train crew was in any way acting in concert with the bandits. The Commission was also very anxious to find if the train guard, a body of about 20 men, offered any resistance.
Two or three were wounded, one having three fingers blow: off, and while independent witness: cannot testify that the guard did or did not fire at-the bandits, the guards maintain they resisted. Certainly some were wounded, but this may have been done while they were bent on putting a safe distance between themselves and the bandits. The car they were travelling in was the last one of the train, and was not derailed With regard to the cause of the outrage, the Commission did not enter into political motives. The immediate cause given was that the bandits held up the train to secure foreigners and thus force the raising of the siege of Paotzeku. The report will show whether this has been accepted.—Reuter.
Mr. Musso on the Hell of Life in Captivity The following is a translation of a letter from Comm. G. D. Musso to his brother in Shanghai, June 7, "the 33rd day of our captivity.
All that is said and published about our release within two or three days is "Tommy. rot." If things are not taken seriously we shall be kept here for several weeks yet. The chief bandits have come to see us this morning. They say that 1, They are waiting for an answer from Peking (Tsao Kun, and Wu Pei-fu), which will be brought by Anderson.
2, They are waiting for the completion of enrolment of the bandits.
3. They are waiting for the settlement of the financial terms.
4. They are waiting—for the settlement of the question of guarantees.
If all this proceeds satisfactorily. the chiefs say, the matter will end in_about two weeks, Here it is hell! Every day it is hell! Every day, every hour and every minute it is hell! Some of the bandits who guard us suffer from dysentery, two of them in a very acute state. One suffers from a flourishing infection of an unmentionable disease. They use our towels, glasses, cups. They drink from our bottles and use our pillows, The flies are by the millions. We are applying disinfectant as much as possible, but we are unable to run after the bandits and often we find traces of dysentery covered with millions of flies. If there is an epidemic outbreak, it will be terrible. I will not mention mos-quites. Solomon and I (besides other ailments) are suffering from malaria.
Yesterday, my temperature rose to 103 degrees. It is @ real hell! The papers are deceived and deceiving, when they speak about jeany release.
While the Chinese Government is playing at politics, we are suffering. Yesterday the bandits received a good quantity of strong wine known as_ "Kao-liang." They played "Morra," and one of them fired at random five shuts from his automatic. Fortunately,.one bandit, who was less drunk than the others, took away the weapon. We are not exaggerating when we say that we are in constant danger of our lives. Yesterday, the bandits had a great elabration and broke into our camps, causing much alarm. You can communicate these facts to the different people interested so that they will not have any illusions as to our early release, which is a joke.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.