[
    {
        "id": 212218,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1990",
        "page_number": 160,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "137\n\nMaru was blown ashore at Hongkong during a typhoon, and the British without fuss readily agreed to allow the Japanese to salvage her themselves from right under the guns of one of the major forts of the Hongkong defences. They were hard at it when I was in Hongkong in 1938. Now, of course, all that unilateral courtesy was forgotten by the champions of Greater East Asia.\n\nIn May we were faced with Dunkirk, in June France collapsed. The Japanese applied pressure to both Britain and France to discontinue transfer of supplies to China over routes under their control. America gave no support. France agreed to close the Indo-China railway to such supplies. At the height of the negotiations with Britain, Mr. Stephen Early, the President's Secretary issued a statement asserting \"...the complete absence of any intention whatever on the part of the United States to interfere with territorial questions involving adjustments in Europe or Asia. The United States Government want to see, and thinks there should be, application of the Monroe Doctrine in Europe and Asia, similar to its interpretation and application for this hemisphere.\" Japan saw the green light. On July 18th Great Britain agreed to close the Burma road for three months to supplies of arms, ammunition, petrol, lorries, and railway material for China. Other supplies, of which there was an abundance, continued to pass through to the extent which the landslides, frequent during the summer rains, allowed.\n\nA week later America placed an embargo on the shipment of oil and scrap to Japan. America's anxiety to emphasize her determination to retain her independence of action thus created embarrassments for Britain in the Far East at a time when the British back was to the wall in Europe, and operated to the disadvantage of China. Had the American embargo been announced ten days earlier the Burma road would not have been closed.\n\nTiming is of the essence of warfare. \"Time, only give me time\", said Napoleon. It was not Germany, who missed the bus in the spring of 1940, as Mr. Chamberlain claimed, but Japan. In July, when the negotiations about the Burma road were in progress, the situation was very tense; I thought Japan would declare war. I was on the Reserve of Officers, and I was anxious not to be caught in Shanghai. From my Chinese contacts I had learnt a good deal about the guerilla organisation which was operating in the environs, and I thought I",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 214993,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2000",
        "page_number": 89,
        "title": "RAS-2000",
        "content_text": "45\n\nwas selected and marked with the so-called Chinese eyes like those on a sea-going junk. It served with the 6th Battalion first as Fly-paper though subsequently it was re-named Fan-tan. The 6th Battalion later adopted the eyes as a regimental symbol. Mr David Fletcher of the Tank Museum at Bovington, in correspondence with the author, was not aware that this symbol was not generally adopted in the Great War. The 6th ultimately converted to Whippets, on which Mr Fletcher had never seen the Eyes symbol. When the 6th Battalion was disbanded after the Great War its various honours and customs were passed to the 4th Battalion which then adopted the Eyes as a Battalion symbol. The 4th Battalion used it on their vehicles from the 1920s and, when they amalgamated with the 1st Battalion RTR in 1993, it was adopted by them. In the 1930s the 6th Battalion was reconstituted and was still around to take part in the 1956 Suez action and never got back their Eyes symbol!\n\nIn the main exhibition hall of the Imperial War Museum in London there is a Mark V tank with \"European\" eyes. These tanks were introduced in the Spring of 1918 and first saw action at Le Hamel in France in July 1918. This tank, Devil [T9171] was believed to have served with B Company of the 4th Battalion of the Tank Corps and was still in service in 1925. This tank, belonging to the 4th Battalion, would have been entitled to the Eyes symbol.\n\nCamps and Recreation\n\nCamps were maintained behind the Front lines, some of the larger being at Boulogne, Calais, Dunkirk with the Head Quarters at Noyelles-sur-Mer. Hospitals were at Noyelles-sur-Mer, Arques, Moulle and Calais, with the Shorncliffe Military Hospital at Folkestone also being used for sick and injured Chinese. There was a prison for Chinese at Noyelles.\n\nLabourers died as a result of disease, bombings, gassing and, after the war, when clearing the battlefields and when digging graves, by the many unexploded bombs and grenades. Many also died as a result of the post-war influenza epidemic known as the Spanish Flu. I have seen two photographs, taken of the funeral procession of the German flying ace, Baron Manfred von Richthofen [the Red Baron] at Bertangles cemetery on 22nd April 1918 and amongst the crowd looking over the",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n",
        "rank": 0
    }
]