Must Japanese fire insurance companies pay for the damages that resulted from the conflagrations of Septenber 1 and after? The policy-holders insist that they should and stormy meetings have been held condemning the at de of the companies in there empt to dodge their respon: as the policyholders. One of these meetings tume: out to be a very stormy one, Several hundred policy holders met at the Japan Club, in Marunouchi, Tokio—a portion of the city where some buildings are still left standing—carrying banners hearing the inscription: 'Pay us the insurance money you owe us,' and, after violent'—speech-making, adopted a resolution to the following effect: "It is only vight that our insurance policies should be honoured. We hereby resolve to fight to the bitter end until we secure every sen due us. The future of the capital depends on our efforts."
The Government, it is rwmoured, will come to the aid of the insurance companies, and by advancing them money will enable them to meet the needs of policy holders to some extent. But here again another difficulty crops up. Most of the Japanese fire insurance companies are reinsured with British and American companies it is not likely that the foreign companies will care to shoulder the losses. In fact, the Asahi Fire and Marine Insurance Company, of Kobe, is reported to have received a cable from the London Insurance Componies' Association telling the Kobe company that. if it decides to pay insurance, the British companies cannot hold itself responsible for the payment of losses suffered through re-insurance with British insurance firms.
Officials of the Department of Justice, who have been making extensive investigations in Tokio and Yokohama, are of the opinion that it will be possible to differentiate between fires that were a direct result of the quake and others that were not. For instance, it is maintained. that insurance policy-holders—whose ing retained to fight the matter out, and the outcome is being watched with considerable interest.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.