JAPANESE IN CHINA

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22515, 24 September 1938, Page 22

JAPANESE IN CHINA

A JOURNALIST’S INDICTMENT What War Means: Japanese Terror in . China. By H. J. Timpcrley. Gollancz. 388 pp. (7/6 net.) Mr Timperley has had nearly 20 years’ experience of the Far East. He has been, during the recent warfare, China correspondent of the “Manchester Guardian.” Satisfied that the information on which his messages were based was irrefutable and finding them suppressed or mutilated by the Japanese authorities as “grossly exaggerated,” he set himself to find unimpeachable documentary evidence for the reports of “rape and loot and general bestiality” alleged against the Japanese invaders. He found it. Most of it is drawn from the attestations, casereports, and official and personal correspondence of the International Committee for Nanking Safety Zone and of the International Red Cross Committee of Nanking. The reports show a vast amount of callousness, carelessness, dishonesty, and lack of control in senior Japanese officers and a deplorably low level of conduct in the Japanese soldiery. The worst has not been told, probably will never be known. From the murder of young girls to the theft of 20,000 tons of grain by Japanese authorities from the International Relief Committee, the Japanese record is one of brutality and dishonesty. Mr Timperley and his colleagues and. informants have no wish to stir up animosity. As one man says, “To me the big thing is the unmeasured misery from this war of conquest, misery multiplied by licence and stupidity, and projected far injo a gloomy future.” “What War Means is not written indignantly or bitterly. It consists largely of sworn evidence from respectable and kindly Europeans; they speak well when ,they can of the Japanese, but that is rarely, and the impression left is of an army mad with slaughter, lust, and doubt.