FOT
Hospital, has a whole wing there with his wife and little daughter with good food and servants, and every 2nd day he has two people brought in from tanlay ostensibly for X-ray, and gives them a happy two days. Their gratitude" and appreciation is pitiful, and it does also keep up contact with Stanley prison, because these people take verbal mesanges back every two days, and keep people at Stanley in touch with the outside world. His friends consider him a walking Saint and Hartyr. Cartainly he has had a lot to enchire, but he keeps on.
For the ordinary person, not involved in the iies and dislikes of Hong Kong, it is hard to know what to think about him. Opinions are equally strong on both sides.
Bone time before we lest Hong Kong a friend, a 3rd National, had gone up the peak to see if there was any thing unlooted in their house; which might be of use, in particular, summer clothes. She told me that the Peak was finished. mere was not a house
there that hadn't got the windows open, shutters hanging by ons hinge, front door open, very often the floors up and staircases out. Her description of the once lovely hases of Hong Kong was pitiful and utterly depressing. Certainly I found Gat troet and tanley street, with the loot from those sme haues, utterly depressing also, the breaking up of an :mpire? Une hoped not.
The typhoons of July and .ugust will finish those houses, the wind will take off every roof: There will be nothing left of them in six months time. And the few bits and pieces which Madame Tyrtoff was able to retrieve were utterly useless, a mass of mould. The rehabilitation of Hong Kong will take a tremendous lot of cement and brick and wood, and all the interior furnishings of a house. There is nothing left now, And no motor cars, nor refrigerators. nor electric stoves, nor grand pianos. There will be plenty of. sale for those things when Hong Kong is rebuilt.
this out over here on mail
(ur trip over the hills to Repulse bay and on to Stanley bore
them carefully. Just as well I did have this to think about, because I was leaving ilong Kong, and my husband and all the happy life we
had had together in China. And to bring this house to me ferously, r. Henry was sitting opposite me in the very crowded bus. The hat he was waring was a very good quality felt, of a light gray colour, pulled down in a slouch over his eyes. I looked it it again and again; even turning down the brim could not ruin the style of that Herbert Johson hat, which had been my husband"s. I had given it away to won vans, with other of his clothes that could not take with me and Dr. Henry was onjoying it now.
Seeing that hat made e feel as though I could have died, especially when we pasred the Cametery at Happy Valley. There hav been many time during the past mantus when I would have gladly died to escape the heartache, the mood that descended like fog and drove me to the seventh Hell or black depression. But it was no use feeling like that, it was no use feling at all. Feelings had to be numbed and deadened in these days, and my stories of the good times Master and I had had in China were safe in the Colf, Bang. Do I sat and locked at the ruined houses, on the Repulse
on the Repulse Bay Road, and thought of how Ir. Capton hoped that hi roof wouldn't blow off. And how I know that it would and must, but that he wouldn't know that for a good long time. "hich was just as well for him, poor man,
And so, after hours of waiting we finally got on to the Asama Haru and were fairly comfortable all the way to Louronco Karques. Dertainly we owe great appreciation to the men of the American Diplomatic and Consular Corps who turned out of their good cabins to give the missionary women and their children confort and fresh air, Do many missionaries and their children! They all should have been safely at home a year or more ago, and if the warnings of their Govern ent had been heeded would have been spared all the strain and discomfort and unhappiness they had been forced to endure during the past eight months. They had atrocity stories to tell many many of them, the most horrible kinds of atrocity stories. It is a curious thing how history repeats itself, and these stories are no new thing, they are the inevitable consequence of war, ever since the days when he Bayrians came down like a wolf on the fold. Not that that oases the position for people who are caught. They suffer, as terribly as captives have always muffered in any war.
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Anuman
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