The right wing of the hospital had been almost completely destroyed by an incendiary bomb dropped by a Chinese aeroplane.
After seeing the two hospitals, the correspondents were taken to Yangtszepoo to see for themselves how the Japanese are caring for numbers of Chinese who preferred to risk death by clinging to their humble homesteads, most of them now ruins, The deadlock was broken at the eleventh hour yesterday by the action of Italy and Germany in withdrawing their insistence that belligerent rights should be granted before the^withdrawal of volunteers, Both countries agreed, after protracted discussions at the afternoon's meeting of the Committee, that a token withdrawal should take place and that commissions should be sent to Spain to report on the numbers on which the withdrawal pro-
Food Distributed By a coincidence the arrival of ihe foreign visitors occurred just as Japanese soldiers were distributing rice and flour to the Chinese, a bedraggled lot of humanity if ever there was one, As each person went along with a basket or wash-basin, a Japanese soldier ladled out some cooked rice, another a cupful of uncooked rice and a third a cupful of flour. Like Oliver Twists, all the Chinese asked for more, sometimes they were given another helping, sometimes not.
Here again many pictures were taken, the most-favoured subject being a tattered, bedizened and bent old woman, who poured out a long complaint in the Shanghai dialect which, unluckily, none of those listening could understand. She was overwhelmed with gratitude when a few of the newspapermen dug into their pockets for ten and twenty-cent coins and handed them to her. Though unfamiliar, the coins were precious to her.
From the refugee camp, the party were driven back to the Garden Bridge, or, if they preferred, to the Metropole Hotel for the usual afternoon press conference, The tour was handled with true Japanese method dicalness, those participating being assigned to numbered cars, each of which had as one of the passengers a Japanese official,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.