The Chinese Civil Delegate's reply to this was that promise which he had made as the Mayor had not been carried out because of the arrival of Japanese naval reinforcements. The fair-minded reader may judge whether (with the certain knowledge possessed by the Japanese side that the Chinese were occupying with regular army units the prohibited area, plus the aforesaid greatly augmented Peace Preservation Corps and military works, and were taking up a challenging position in close proximity to the Japanese positions) the Japanese authorities were not justi fled in summoning reinforcements, seeing that there were nearly 30,000 civilians including women and children to protect, who undoubtedly would have been the immediate target of Chinese attack if they had broken through the Japanese defence? Any responsible government. would have been criminally negligent if it had failed to take such precautions, These reinforcements were not summoned until the situation as revealed by Chinese intransigeance hat become so critical as to justify the expectation of an immediate attack by the Chinese. When the Chinese attack did—eventuate, the small Japanese defence force was so overwhelmingly outnumbered that it was only through the most desperate and heroic fighting thatthe attackers were held at bay. Some day. the story of that epic struggle against stupendous odds will be told. Moreover, what made the position seem well-nigh hopeless at the time was the delay in the arrival of Japanese reinforcenfents, which were detained two precious days because of typhoon weather. Does this look like Japanese aggression
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.