In the issue of the "North-China Daily News," dated April 4, a report appeared from the Domei News Agency that Chinese intelligence Officers and six spies had been caught—"Included among those taken into custody was Ta Ching-wu, who headed a band of six spies with headquarters in a foreign mission school,"
The implications of this report not only for missionaries in Hangchow but for missionaries in general who are working in China, are so serious, that it calls for a clarification.
In the first case, to the best of my knowledge, there are no "foreign mission schools" in Hangchow. Previous to the occupation of the city, mission schools had been closed and the more important ones had been moved to Shanghai. No spies have been found in any mission compound.
There is a small Chinese church school, which has been functioning in a Y.W.C.A. building. This school has no connection with any foreign missionary society. In January of this year, two of its teachers were suddenly arrested. Enquiries were made as to the cause for this but explanations were given. One of these was Ong Ching-wu, not Ta Ching-wu, as reported by Domei. But the two are doubtless the same.
Ta Ching-wu was formerly a student in a German medical school at Woosung, came to Hangchow in dire poverty and accepted a teaching position at a salary that covered little more than his food expenses. His associates said that he never went Outside, nor received friends, kept very closely to the school and to his work of teaching. It was an absolute surprise to his school associates, that he and a fellow teacher in the same school should be put under arrest. If the slightest evidence had ever come to the school management of their being spies, they would never have been accepted.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.