A daring dozen Shanghai ladies returned from Hongkong yesterday. Taking advantage of the first opportunity to end their war-exile, these evacuees came up from the Colony in the French, Mail steamer D'Artagnan in the company of 240 other passengers bound for Shanghai. They were brought up the river from Woosung in the French sloop Dumont D'Urville and taken by tender to the Custom's Jetty where a throng had gathered-to give them an unusually wèri welcome.
It was the first and last batch of returning women from Hongkong for the time being, according to the report that the Colony had prohibited such repatriation shortly after the s. D'Artagnan had sailed.
One returning woman told a "North-China Daily News" representative that following favourable broadcasts from Shanghai, a large number of evacuees had booked return passage in the D'Artagnan, but that most of these had been cancelled at the eleventh hour when bad news was received from this ci The trip up the coast was very smooth and pleasant, she said, and no trouble was experienced in coming up the Whangpoo River from Woosung in the French sloop. The distant boom of exploding bombs was the only indication of active war in the vicinity of Shanghai as the sloop passed Japanese warships between 2 pin. and 4 p.m. on the way up Thy river: 2
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.