"We have not evacuated, and we are rather proud of that."
Though in the bright sunlight of a fine, quiet afternoon there seemed little behindgthose words spoken by one of the regular police force at West Hongkew station, "North-China Daily News" representatives who visited the area yesterday knew that they well summed up the spirit of the small force which has kept law and order for the S.M.C. in "Windy Corner" through the bad days which have passed.
Fourteen regulars and 22 Specials in the foreign staff, 47 Sikhs and 191 Chinese, under Inspector J. E. P. Blenkinsop, comprise the force which is taking care of things beyond the Soochow Creek. Tales of looting, of charging mobs of hundreds in—the early days of the trouble when food shortage was feared, detectives solving murders in the middle of all the rest, shrapnel dotting the station com pound, these were told quietly and with humour. A forlorn crowd of looters squatted on their haunches in the station yesterday afternoon, backingeup the stories to the full.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.