The announcement made on Thursday to the effect that the western areas would be reopened to refugees yesterday is as welcome as it is timely. Welcome because it is probably the best contribution towards the effective resetilement of the districts from which the Chinese have fled, and to which they would be only too willing to return if they considered it safe to do so. The desire to get back to their farms in the "Hungjao area during recent weeks has been such that those who had evacuated it were running grave risks nightly in passing through the barbed wire barricades, clear proof of their anxiety to get back to their farms. Foreign residents have equally been desirous of returning to their properties, and it is to be anticipated that, they wil speedily put their houses into repair and resume the delightful life of which they have been deprived for so long. It will even encourage the writer of the Country Di: because it will enable him to go further agald in that research which provides such ides reading three times a week. But the important point is that the presence of foreigners in that district will encourage the Chinese, and, as those from other areas find that their confreres in the western areas are able to live peacefully under Japanese control. the desire to return to their own farms will be fortified with that confidence given them by the example which Hungjao should provide. It is obvious that the resettlement of the area north of Shanghai, where so much fighting took place, may still prove a matter of time, but as the Chinese realize they can live there in safety the return will be accelerated, and it is reasonable to hope that the time is not far distant when the land will again be in full bearing to the alleviation Shi hai's alimentary anxieties. There appears to have been some hitch in the matter yesterday, and quite a number of people desiring to return to the Hungjao district were disappointed. It is hoped that this will soon be adjusted.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.