On the other hand, there are about twenty thousand Japanese troops at present in North China, mostly concentrated around Peiping and Tientsin, and along the Peiping-Mukden Railway, in the demilitarized zone, Six thousand of these troops are from the ordinary Japanese North China garrison, they hold Tientsin, the two railway stations in that city, and the railway bridge from Tientsin towards Peiping. There is a battalion of Japanese at Fengtai, which has recently been reinforced by troops sent from Manchuria through Shanhaikwan, Other Japanese. troops are distributed in the neighbourhood of Tientsin and along the Peiping-Mukden Railway. Several thousand have come into Hopei from Jehol, via Kupeikow, but it is expected' that these will be withdrawn to rejoin the Kwantung Army in Manchuria as soon as reinforcements have arrived from Japan proper. For, in the Japanese view, Manchoukuo is sparsely enough garrisoned without being drained of troops for a speculative venture in North China, To support these troops, at least two divisions of Japanese are on their way from Japan to Tangku. Two, possibly three, other divisions have been warned. for service, and ere being made ready to' join the divisions in North China should the emergency arise The peace strength of a Japanese division is about ten thousand men; the war-time strength approximately double. It is therefore probable that the divisions being ut to North China and under provisional orders to go there, number between seventeen and eighteen thousand men each, If nothing occurs to make necessary the despatch of the extra divisions from Japan, it is probable that, before ien days are out, the Japanese will have in North China approximately fifty-five thousand men, with the usual army equipment of guns, tanks, lorries, and the necessary adjuncts usually associated with Army troops.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.