Tokyo, June 21.
British reports of alleged manhandling "of British residents by Japanese sentries in Tientsin were categorically denied by a Foreign Office spokesman here today.
"Malicious anti-Japanese propaganda," the spokesman said, was being disseminated abroad in connection with the situation in Tientsin but the Japanese authorities in Tientsin were discriminating against Britons.
"All people have been dealt with alike and they have been dealt with în accordance with their individual merit," the spokesman said, asserting that no official information had reached Tokyo regarding the alleged preferential treatment being accorded Americans, Germans and Italians in 'A War Office spokesman characterized as "a typical case of malicious propaganda" the report that a British woman had been manhandled by Chinese policemen examining her under the eyes of Japanese soldiers. The woman was alleged to have become hysterical when the policemen murmured obscenities in Chinese.
The spokesman pointed out that two inspection booths, one for women, the other for men, had been established at each of the seven points of access into the concessions. Women and children were being inspected by policewoman and not by policemen, the spokesman emphasized, The report that Britons had been stripped was also emphatically denied by the spokesman, who admitted that searchers may have touched passers "rhe spokesman pointed out that the British reports alleging that indignities had been inflicted upon British men and women never gave the names of the purported victims. In contrast, names- of persons who had undergone a slight contretemps by having to go from one gate to another to obtain access were plainly given.—Domei.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.