Tokyo, Sept. 6.
The spokesman of the Foreign Office said to-day that one of Japan's reasons for excluding Tsingtao from the naval blockade of the China Coast was a request to this effect from British consular officers. He added, "however, that Japan also desired to maintain peaceful conditions at the Shantung seaport.
The Japanese Government, the spokesman' said, had received no official information regarding reports that China was obtaining munitions from Soviet Russia, via Mongolia and Sinkiang.
The spokesman denied the Government was contemplating missions to be sent to Occidental countries to attempt to explain the Japanese attitude towards recent events in China.
The official investigation of the wounding of the British Ambassador to China, Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, by a Japanese military aeroplane, is being continued, the spokesman revealed, although the British Embassy here intimated last Friday that a reply to the British Note demanding an apology was within two days. The Foreign Office spokesman declined either to confirm or deny a report heard here to-day that the aviator believed "to be responsible for wounding the British Ambassador could not be found.
Feeling that they will be war-bound for months to come, nearly all the women at Weihaiwei are* busy with knitting needles and spools of wool at the urgent business of fashioning their winter wardrobes. With the bleak winter winds approaching rapidly and all their heavy clothes in Shanghai, those on extended summer holidays in the north are wielding their knitting needles in a race against time and the weather man.
With coastal communications opening up and foreign ships moving in and out through the Japanese Naval blockade, it is again possible to ship belongings to those stranded in northern resorts, But with eventualities so uncertain, the ladies are taking no chances of shivering through the winter in summer clothing. While not going anywhere, their status has changed from holiday-makers to evacuees.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.