The most obvious of these signs of preparation is the strider enforce ment of the new conscription law by which the entire population of China is officially regarded as the army of defence. Even women are to" be taught that their duty is to follow the scripted in three degrees—the first is a brief training of three months, the second a year or more and the third a three year period of service another province. Some men desperately contrive to avoid the third of these with all its uncertainties and the possibility that the conseript_may never return and men who have thus left their homes have ever been seen or heard of again. Wis said that even priests are being conscripted as ordinary civilians; it must be an entertaining spectacle to See a squad of priests doing bending exercises before an. irate' sergeant major.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.