Without Salaries They had no Other Recourse Frost Oun Ow?
Tokyo, Mar. 21.
The citizens of Tokyo are not tale ing very much about the recent re-beltian in public places, restaurants, hotels, trains, trams and other spots where people gather. Any person spreading false rumours is likely {0 be tipped on the shoulder and ordered to proceed to the police station.
(Of course the guardians of the law are well within their rights in arrest ing rumour-mongers for one of the first regulations issued by the Martial Law Headquarters was a warning that all persons disseminating false reports would be arrested.
But it is not a very comfortable feeling when one perpetually has to use the utmost caution in talking, specially when there are so many incredible as well as credible rumours about. It is well to remember, how-fever, that Tokyo is still under martial Jaw and considering everything one cannot complain for in all other respects conditions have returned to normal and as your correspondent has mentioned, it is to be doubted whether Such a tranquil state of affairs as exists here to-day would prevail in any other country under similar conditions.
With regard to newspapermen, especially foreign correspondents, there is a very. unusual situation, When it was disclosed that the only charge made against Mr. Gerald Samson, the British freclance journalist who Was arrested shortly after the outbreak of the rebellion, was that he had spread false rumours in the Imperiad Hotel, most of the correspondents became alarmed. For the truth is"that every person Tokyo, without exception, was guilty of spreading rumours of one kind or another. As for the correspondents they were cabling some of these reports all aver the world.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.