So long as the river remains closed, the foreign community are dependent on the courtesy of the Japanese, direct or indirect, for the transportation of their mails. Such courtesy, when shown, has been sparse and discriminatory and at least one Consulate has found, and then only on protest and investigation, that mails which it had collected and passed on to the Japanese Consulate, strictly in accordance with the terms of an agreement, had never got beyond the office of the latter, and were eventually returned to the consigning consulate, after some delay of no less than three weeks. Shocking and inexcusable inefficiency is the most moderate and charitable construction that can be placed on such treatment of an agreement. The foreign community will not readily accept the view that the Japanese are not under a moral, and possibly indeed a legal, obligation to supply an adequate substitute service. For the most part they are virtually isolated from the outer world. There is extreme dissatisfaction with this state of affairs and loud and very general demand that it must cease.
The port is closed, the Customs are not functioning, indeed one cannot but secept the Japanese view that the latter is a corollary of the former. But the eviction of officials from the Custom House and its occupation by the military seem to indicate a long-term policy rather than a temporary necessity.
Japanese men and women are arriving in the port in rapidly swell ling numbers. Each "transport" may be observed discharging its quote. The Japanese asser, that there is no trade, and that there will be none, indefinitely. Then why this steady influx of civilians? The Japanese assertion that they are all military adjuncts does not ring true.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.