In their complimentary letter. to General and Madame Chiang Kai-shek, the group of senior members of Oxford University make reference to a process in the Sino-Japanese hostilities which, at a future date when matters may be rudied more objectively, should furnish a valuable subject of investigation. This is the tremendous movements of the Chinese population in front of advancing armies. In all wars where fighting extends over a large area there are depopulation movements either through casualties ora natural desire by civilians to seek safety outside the war zone, but no war in centuries has resulted in such a mass migration as the present unhappy conflict in China. During the Great War in Europe, on the western front the war zone was not more than a hundred or so miles broad. -In China, the J: nese have penetrated 600 miles into China and the former popula n of the area under Japanese control is estimated at 180,000,000 people. How many of ese remain n this area is impossible to but if it is conjectured that a third have moved elsewhere. that means in figures populations equalling some European countries have migrated. This has been caused not only by fear of the invader but the ferocious and destructive manner in Which the war has been conducted. Destruction divided between actual warfare and the "scorched earth" polit has been undertaken with the atavistic zeal of the barbarian invaders of Europe plus a higher degree of offici d method provided by modern combustib incidents on record aqua! the obliteration of some Chinese cities. Another phase, mentioned in the letter, is the work of the Chinese authorities in moving city populations westwards With the armies in face of the Japanese advance. Hankow, and its sister cities, Wuchang and Hanyang, are typical examples where four-of the population were moved out methodically before Japan occupatia What is now called' "free China." some swollen enormously. Before Changsha put to the flames, the population h sed from operations, had doubled. Within the area in Japanese control there has been a return of lation to the principal cities. some of which normal, but this takes no account of 1 populations which comprised China density. Civilian casualties are cit uta million and the thoroughness oí sonic phases of the campaign left little shelter for those who could remain behind so the population shift must have been tremendous, As an illutration of national dislocation through wa [revealed in commercial statistics, the n investigating, it of the Empress The death in New York Cat Carl th painter, recalls a incident in the annals of the Court c the painting of the Emp Dowager's portrait It y historical for it was the first t that a foreigner was really permitted to penetrate the privacy of the Imperial Court, and the first time t the Old Buddha, as she w known io millions of her subjects, condescended to ud have a portrait painted by one of the eigners whom she alw ced her as she could. When the mentioned to Empress Dow'u it was stated that Miss C: un reputation, the old international aryed and it required considerable vi once the decision was m threw herself enthusiastically nto the not only was Miss Carl able s but she was ived quent visits to the Imp that she was able to gain zn int into court life which she embodied in her book "With the Empress Dowager of China" published in 1905. Only a few years previously had the Empress Dowager permitted the wives of foreign diplomats to visit her, so the distinction usual, but the artist needed considerable ndle her imperial sitter, who used her throu mination to interpret the world beyond the Dragon throne, When the portrait was finished and was removed from the Palace for shipment to the St. Louis Exposition where it was exhibited, she displayed her dignity and superstitious habit of thought in a remarkable manner. It is related:
She regarded this presentment of her august entitled, in all seriousness of ceremonial same reverence as herself, and gave orders for the construction of a miniature railway to be bult through the streets of the capital for its special benefit. By this means the "sacred countenance" was carried upright, under its canopy of yellow silk, and Her Majesty was spared the thought of being borne in effigy on the shoulders Of coolies—a form of progress too suggestively ill-omened to be endured. Before the portrait left the Palace, the Emperor was summoned to prostrate himself before it, and at its passing through the city, and along the railway line, the people humbly knelt, as if it had been the Old Buddha of flesh and blood.
The Empress Dowager was polite in her com-piiments to the painter, who received a high decoration, but history does not reveal her private judgment of the portrait which now hangs in the National Museum at Washington.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.