The steps taken by the Chinese authorities to protect Japanese nationals in Chapel should have a reassuring effect. They have increased the police force in that area con siderably and have doubled the patrols in the districts where the Japanese population is thickes:. These precautions should make dimieult for any wanton killer succeed in escaping, if the Japanese theory that there 1s an organization Shanghai that is out to murder Japanese indiscriminately ju, the -hope.. of embarrassing the Nanking Government is correct. It remains ely to suggest Improving the lighting system in thave parts. Long, dark Stretches of road make It easy for fan assassin to commit his crime and flee without being seen, Better Lhting should make those streets as safe as the streets in any other port of Shanghai. The measures taken by the Chinese authorities to reassure the Japanese community will not be of much value, however, Jong. as that community is served with sensational and alarmist ruincurs. Recently the readers of tone of the most popular local Japanese journals read. that forty Cantonese "professional assassins"
arrived from the South-west, Whether' these ao-caled°amasens intended to attempt the lives of some of the Government leaders or terrorize the Japanese was not stated. But a sentence in the report saying hat the wins" were going to use poison in future, owing to the "unsatisfactory consequences of the use of pistols in the murder of Warrant Officer Hideo Nakayama," hinted at anti-Japanese plans. This kind of report is scaremongering; it tends to increase public anxiety. If the report had any foundation, there mi be some excuse for publishing it, Dut yesterday it was 'oMelally deseribed as ridiculous,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.