"Who can refute the fact that the Chinese had notified individually all foreigners, as well as Chinese, who lived in that part of the Settlement which lies east of the Soochow Creek and urged them to move out of the district for safety by nightfall of Aug. 13?
"And who can, finally, deny that when the Chinese forces had launched an attack from both air and land, the only remaining inhabitants in the attacked area were Japanese non-combatants?
"Suppose. that the Chinese had succeeded in breaking through the Japanese defence line that night. Then the fate of the tens of thousands of Japanese residents would have been the same as that which befell 300 Japanese men, women and children a short time earlier at Tungchow.
Such "outstanding and undeniable" facts, the spokesman said, should never be ignored by "those who wield the power of the press"
The statement was in reply to an editorial in the "New York Times" on Oct 4, in which that journal criticized the spokesman for his failure to substantiate his contention that the Shanghai incident was caused by Chinese "provocations."
When the Shanghai hostilities broke out on Aug 13, he went on. 3,000 Japanese bluejackets faced a Chinese force ten times that number.
Commenting on the concentration of Japanese warships in Shanghai just pridr to the outbreak of the incident; the spokesman said that the Japanese gunboats and destroyers assembled in the harbour reached Mason F. W. Gerrard, on the termination of his sick leave spent in Japan, resumes command of the Shanghai Municipal Police Force to-day.
Ture will be a celebration of the Holy Communion this morning in the Bubbling Well Chapel at 10.30.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.