Last year that "as far as eireum~ stances permit" meant imports into Manchoukuo from Japan valued at ¥.507,216003, from' Great Britain the main building an outside wall was torn down, leaving a gaping hole: through' which whistled the winter wind which is, siberia's main export to the new state. With the result' that with the steam-heating on dull blast, the building resembled an icebox, 'A British business man staying at the hotel" complained to a high 'Japanese official' that eating all his meals exposed to the Manchoukuoan climate had given him a bad chill.
"Why select this sort of weather' in which to tear down walls? asked the aggrieved. Briton, The Japanese oMfcial smiled polite ly and expressed his profound regret that a foreign guest should have been, thus inconvenienced. "But at Toast," he added suavely, "you cannot say we do not maintain the Open Door to Manchoulkuo!"
Humour is met with in. surprising places to-day. It was an offer of an fanti-bandit force, just back from a month's campaign among the still Snow-clad hills of the north, who remarked to me "I have been frost bitten four times since January. It time the League of Nations did' something about It" The stock joke among Japanese ofcials, however—when. not talking for publication—is. to pretend to forget the name of the Prime Minister of Manchoukuo.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.