More than 3,000 applications for permission to build homes in Dairen wore filed with the local police during the five months since January, attesting to the tremendous building boom that is gaining in momentum -Jever since the creation of Manchoukuo. Seventy per cent. of the applications are for apartment houses, which although already numerous in. this city are bound to be completely }"booked" as soon as the corner-stone is ald. Tt has been the phenomena Jot the last few years that no matter how many huge apartment buildings fare constructed here they are besieged by potential tenants as soon as construction plans are disclosed, and every room taken long before the structures are completed for oc~
For _monl Russian press of!
sug nZiabla, Sone 38, Harbin has been publishing accounts! of the trial of the kidnappers and. murderers of Simon Kaspe in such manner as to make the general Public come to the conclusion that only the lightest of sentences would be pronounced, specially after the' Judges permitted the accused to plead that they had acted as Russian Patriots and the defending counsel had quoted paragraphs from various authors in which the Jewa were shown as a race who should be Femoved from the face of the earth.
The sentence of the Court in the Kaspe murder case, announced this. morning, therefore, came as a bombshell to those Russian emigrants who were certain that the former -police detective Martinoff and his gang of associates would get off lightly. The Judges were not misled by accused's statements regarding their work for Russia but judged the case as an Outrageous one of Kidnapping and cold blooded murder. The court sentenced the four principals, Mfartioff, Shandar, Kirichenko and Zaltsef, to death and their assistants, Kommisarenko and Bezruchko, to hard labour for life. For the Jewish and foreign population, amongst whom the greatest tension has been. felt during the trial, the sentences come as an enormous relief, as they prove that the newly appointed judges and the reformed Courts are determined to end dangers which have for years threatened many peaceful Harbin re-'Sidents, The gang, headed by de-tactives, which caused the murders of Kaufmann, Alter and Kaspe has been broken up, while others. whose names are not known, will hasten to eave the country.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.