PHE long-expected Japanese at Canton, Sept..27. tack on. the Canton-Hankow Rail: way materialized to-day, when various points along the line were subjected to bombings by Japanese planes.
There were two raids on the railway, one in the morning and another in the afternoon, and each time Canton received its share of bombs.
Reports of damage to the railway line have not yet been correlated, but it seems evident that the Japanese are determined to put the railway completely out of action to prevent movement of troops and supplies north.
If the line is destroyed, it will mean the bottling up of the' foreign communities and the crew of foreign gunboats in the Yangtze as the railway is at present their only means of reaching the outside world besides the extremely hazardous railway journey from Nanking to Shangh:
Semi-official sources state that this morning's casualties in the attack on Wongsha railway stati jon, the terminus of the Canton-Hankow Railway, totalled 80 pers jons, including dead and wounded. Most of those killed were in tenement buildings as only six people lost their lives in the station itself.
It seems that ong of the bombs fell on the railway workshops and, it is believed, a number of railway work: ers were blown up, while huge clouds of black smoke were seen to rise because of the all in the shops.
For the first time to-day, a number of spent machine-gun bullets were leked up in Shameen, Reuter's correspondent found it most -diMeult to reach the scene of to-day's bombings and personally to inspect the damage done as, apart from the diflculty of leaving and returning to Shameen, the Chinese police placed a strong cordon around the vicinity of the affected are Temper of Crowds Uncertain In addition, the temper of the crowds was very uncertain, and most any foreigner was likely to be Unbelied a Jupanese spy and attacked or arrested, Canton experienced in all three alr-raids to-day. The first occurred in the early hours of the morning, the Second at 9.20 this morning, and the third some time after 2.30 this atter-hoon, Only one Japanese " plane visited the city in the first raid, but some thirteen. machines took part in second and five in the last, "The early morning attack followed during which the war-weary populace of Canton wer roused from their beds by the tween 330 and 4' am., dropped two bombs, which Janded in open country near the aerodrome and did no damage, as far as could be ascertained.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.