Everything Undisclosed From Our Special Correspondent on the Pinpool Front Undisclosed City, May 23
I was agreeably surprised on reaching the Shanghai aerodrome to find that a 1928 Banzai aeroplane had been provided to take me. and a few other correspondents who do not matter, [to the pin pool front. The aeroplane had twi engines, both doing well, and a mystic sign—123/24—inscribed on its fuselage. The sign. interested me, and I was told that its purpose was to bate the enemy. According to my informant. whose name must, for obvious reasons, remain undisclosed, enemy pilots are always nonplussed by this sign, which is a clever crypfogram. Adding up the figures 123 the total is six; twenty-four is so apparently wrong, that ihe attacking enemy pauses to work out the flaw and, before he can reach the correct result, is usually multiplied by six and shot down in flames. The solution, I am authorized to reveal, is that two and four—the digits used in twenty-four—added together make six, the correct total. But by the time the enemy pilot has fathomed this ruse, he is for all the purposes of a military communique, a great aerial victory, Our flight to Nanking was uneventful, except for a delightful lunch. I had vegetable soup, fried wong yt, pot roast. asparagus tips, lemon cheese cakes, and coffee. I forgot to mention that there was mayonnaise sauce witn the asparagus tips. And also that I had mild indigestion before reaching the shell-scarred walls of China's former capital Another thing I forgot to mention was that the waiter spoke French, and that the chef had played the double bass in a musie hall orchestra before the hostilities called him to the sterner business of war.
At Nanking we were greeted by a colonel wearing considerable facial camouflage which, eventually pushed on one side, disclosed the well-known features of Colonel Ham Hamaguchi, an old friend from Peiping. Colonel Ham welcomed us in perfect German and discoursed
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.