Mr. Vespa surrounds his story with a considerable amount of circumstantial detail and concludes by pointing out that of the six men who were eventually accused, four were found guilty and condemned to die, and two to life imprisonment. Two days later, Mr. Vespa declared, his chief had the presiding judge of the Chinese court arrested and the sentences declared null and void. Six months later, he says, three Japanese judges dismissed the case and ordered the kidnappers to be released on the ground that they had acted as patriots. With the main, lines of the Kaspe case this reviewer is well acquainted, but it comes as a very great surprise to him to learn that the Japanese authorities in Manchu-ría were so deeply involved.
The writer makes reference to other underworld activities of the Japanese gendarmerie, and when all that has been going on in Manchoukuo is realized it is not easy to put aside a volume such as this and say that it is wholly unreliable. Had Mr. Vespa written more dispassionately his work míght have carried greater conviction and would certainly have relieved him of the criticism that by reason of his experiences a degree of fiction was possibly used to colour what in any event would have been a most amazing story.—mT.-6.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.