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?
A
on Sunday the 18th, to enter the walls. There was no looting save in a small way by soldiers who were in need of provisions and foreign property throughout the city was respected.
We
had city water until the 10th, electricity until the follow- dng day and the telephone service actually up to the day the Japanese entered the city. At no time did we feel any serious sense of danger, for the Japanese seemed to be avoiding the Zone with their air bombs and shells and Nanking was the hea- ven of order and safety as compared with the hell it has been ever since the Japanese came.
Japanese came. It is true we had some diffi- culty with our trucking the rice was stored outside the city and some of our drivers did not relish going out where the shells were falling. One lost an eye with a splinter of shrapnel and two of our trucks were seized by the military, but that was nothing compared with the difficulties we have since faced. But I must go on with my chronicle of events.
On December 10th the fefugees were streaming into the Zone. We had already filled most of the Institution buildings Ginling Women's College, the Wa College and other schools, and now had to requisition the Supreme Court building, the Law College and Overseas buildings, forcing doors where they were locked and appointing our own caretakers. Two Ja- panese "Blimps" were visible just beyond the Purple mountain, probably to direct artillery fire. Heavy guns were younding the south wall and shells were dropping into the city. Se- veral shells landed just within the zone to the south the fol- towing morning, killing about 40 near the Bible Teachers Training School and the Foo Chong Hotel. Mr Sperling, our inspector, a German was slightly wounded at the latter place where he was living. The U.S.S. "Panay" moved up river but before it left I had a telephone call (the last city gate had been closed and we had forfeited the right to go aboard the gunboat) from Paxton of our Embassy giving me the last two navy radiograms to reach Nanking. He was telephoning from outside the city, of course, the messages were from Wil- bur and Boynton. Earlier that day I had received another message saying that Marion was to be married December 18th in Hudson, Ohio, but it came to me second hand and I did not get further details.
We were a community of 86 27: 18 Americans, 5 Ger- mans, 1 Englishman, 1 Austrian and & kussians. Out on the river was the "Panay" with the two remaining Embassy men, Atcheson and Paxton and half a dozen others; the Standard 011 and Asiatic Petroleum motor ships with many more, a hulk which had been fitted out as a sort of floating hotel and towed up- stream with some 20 foreigners, including Dr. Rosen of the German Embassy and some 400 Chinese and other fraft. All were looking forward to an early return to the city. How many of them have met their fate we do not know, but it will be a long
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