But in one direction, pomely the cost of living, the population has been very- seriously affected. Prices have risen steeply. Owing to the interrupt tion of railway communications imported goods have not been coming in, and shopkeepers have been putting up their prices accordingly, while owing to the closing of the city gates and the fighting going on in the neighbourhood the country-people have been chary about bringing in their market produce to the city.
Japanese propagandists have broadcast over the radio lurid accounts of the maltreatment of their nationals in Peiping, This to put it mildly, is certainly a gross exaggeration, I have heard of no serious instances. The Japanese military attache who brought this up, as one. of the reasons ior the Japanese troop movements since the clash, was unable tò give any details and when challenged by foreign correspondents shuffled out of it by saying that the cases were too many for him to enumerate. And a certain member of the Japanese Embassy admitted to some journalists that, considering the circumstances, there had been remarkably few cases of assaults on Japanese and that the Chinese authorities. had given very full protection.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.