Two news items in the "Asahi Shimbun," the influential Tokyo news pay are of interest in relation to the financial side of the Japanese campaign in China, One states that a Japanese soldier, formerly a geologist, picked up fragments from a rock struck by Chinese shells at Yangsin and found they contained gold. The samples were sent to Japan for analysis to see if, in the midst of war, a gold mine has been discovered. A more certain method of finding gold, or its equivalent, is contained in the second item which states that the Bank of Japan is to withdraw its notes used for paying military expenses in Central China and "war notes" will be used. Four branch, offices are to be established at Shanghai, Narking, Hangchow and Soochow for this purpose and the plan will be extended to South China as the campaign in that district progresses. This is ominous news for a large section of a country already impoverished by military operations If it means that the war notes will be paid to the troops for purchases through canteens or regular army institutions in the nature of token money there can be-no objection, but if it means that occupied territory is to be flooded with notes which can be produced for the asking by merely accelerating the printing pr the consequences will be serious. The public will await with interest publication of further details because it is not so many months ago that the establishment of the Federated Reserve Bank in North China with an ample supply of bank notes menaced the Shanghai market although the situation, in the meantime, hasbeen corrected.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.