"What is the real intention of the japanese Government regarding the oint note addressed by the Consuls-General of Great Britain, the United States and France to Japan and China regarding the withdrawal of military establishments from near the International Settlement," Mr.
Azuma asked in further interpellations, The Foreign Minister. Mr. Koki Hirota, asserted that only the withdrawal of regular Chinese troops and members of the Peace Preservation Corps could ease the situation around the International Settlement. He denied that Japanese forces would be totally withdrawn from the area.
Questioned regarding possible secret clauses contained in the recently-concluded Sino-Soviet pact of nonaggression, Mr. Hirota declared that he had been given assurances by the Chinese ambassador that no sted er. Prince Fumimaro Konoye replying to quess posed by Mr.
Bunichiro Noda, of the Minseito, reiterated that it Valuable work for the relief of Chinese officers and soldiers wounded in defending their country's ferriter: at Chapei and Woosung is bein; carried on quietly by Chin Buddhist monks.
Headed by Abbot Hung Ming, who was himself a soldier, but who was later converted into a Buddhist, more than 200 monks of local Buddhist temples are working for long hour: daily under a large Chinese war relief organization in Shanghai, Everyday, groups of these monks visited the front in motor trucks. Risking their own lives, they picked up bodies of wounded soldiers and brought them to Shanghai where the wounded were sent to the regular or emergency hospitals for medical treatment. A conservative estimate shows that, since the hostilities opened on August 13, hundreds of wounded soldiers have been rescued at the front and brought to the various hospitals by them:
All members of the Buddhists' relief body have received the necessary training under the guidance of Abbot Hung Ming who, ever since he was converted into a Buddhist, has made up his mind to eradicate the name "hangers-on" which many Chinese applied to the Buddhist monks, and to train them to render good services to-their country.
Describing their work to the press, one of the monks said yesterday that, on two occasions, they were machinegunned by Japanese fighting planes! and, as a result, four of their comrades were wounded, but they carried on their rescue work because, being Buddhists they cared nothing for themselves but the sufferers.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.