"Disintegrated"
Japanese Report Losses Too Great to Be Counted Hankow, May 14.
Ten days after the Japanese forces launched attacks on the major Chinese forces in the fifth war zone, 26 divisions and two mixed brigades have been "disintegrated" and put to rout with heavy losses, the Director of the Press Section of the Japanese Expeditionary Force to Central China claimed here last night.
Among the Chinese forces defeated were five divisions sent from the second, eighth and tenth war zones to reinforce the fifth zone. Such a large number of Chinese troops were killed and taken prisoner that the Japanese have not yet had time to check the total, the press Director stated.
Paris, May 13.
Dunkirk was cast into an uproar today when a huge gorilla escaped from its cage aboard a German vessel just in from the tropics and disappeared for a few hectic hours, the Dunkirk correspondent of "Lo Journal" reported today.
The big ape was on board the German cargo steamer, Ingo, bound for Hamburg from the tropics with a cargo of assorted animals for the Hamburg Zoo. Giraffes, elephants, rhinos and hippos were among other quadrupeds on the floating menagerie, The gorilla was the centre of attention today, however, when it broke out of its cage and made off into the city of Dunkirk. Its disappearance was noticed just as the Ingo was about to weigh anchor."
Immediately all preparations for departure were put off. An expedition was organized to hunt for the ape.
Armed with heavy ropes, the crew of the vessel participated in the search for their protege, prepared for all emergencies, resolved to get their ape, dead or alive.
But nothing very adventurous or thrilling occurred. The search was thorough but lacked spine-tingling chills, for the gorilla had found its way into a wine depot and was found there, harmlessly sleeping in the midst of a few open kegs of wine. It was dead drunk.
In that condition it was swiftly taken back aboard the Ingo and returned to its cage, its fling at dom ended.—Havas, "The "annihilation operations" in which the Japanese Army is engaged are not aimed at the slaughter of individual Chinese soldiers but are designed to frustrate the fighting power of anti-Japanese troops which are "puppets of Gen Chiang's regime" and to demolish their anti-Japanese organizations, the spokesman declared.—Domei.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.