To the Editor of the "Norta-Cuina Dairy News."
Sin,—It is difficult to understand the attitude adopted by a great many of the foreigners resident in Shanghai towards the disaster in Japan. I have just been reading in a Shanghai daily paper (not the North-China Daily News") an account of the earthquake as witnessed by a passenger on the Empress of Australia, and the excellence of the description is almost completely marred by the scathing comments which the author has felt constrained to make on the conduct, private and official, of the Japanese at Yokohama during' and after the occurrence, The writer of the account may or may not -be certain of his facts: he does not indicate that) he was at any time in a better position to judge of the truth than as a passenger on a vessel in the harbour assailed on all sides by accounts by refugees that must of necessity have been rendered to some degree under' the influence of hysteria.
I hold no brief of any kind for the Japanese, having never been to Japan and having practically ro acquaintance with individual Japanese, but this does not prevent me from appreciating' that in a catastrophe which (as the writer of the article admits) may when the full facts come to be known, prove to be the most devastating calamity that has so far visited the earth, there must be a convulsion of the spirit that makes all but the strongest minded panic-stricken and for time at least incapable of judging the moral value of their own actions and those of others.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.