Meanwhile that portion of Nortn China over which the Peiping government claims de facto control she no signs of settling down, The Japanese just hold the railway lines and the larger towns, and beyond that the writ of the new government ceases to Hopei is swarming with disbanded soldiers, bandits and irregulars, or whatever one likes to call them, So-called Red forces have penetrated through the mountain country west of the Peiping-Hankow Railway, from where they make raids on the villages in the plains, carrying off all the young men between seventeen and 25, a form of forced ce scription, There has been a gre: exodus from the villages in the plain between the hills and the railway, as the unfortunate villagers are ground between the upper and nether millstones. In the course of their raids the irregulars have occasionally cut up isolated Japanese posts. for which the Japanese take revenge by burning the surrounding villages
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.