FO371-23514 — Page 141

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to scale the wall and slip in unobserved.

So ended the happy, peaceful, well ordered progres- sive regime which we had been enjoying here in Nanking and on which we had built our hopes for still better days. For the Japanese were already in the city and with them came ter- ror, destruction and death. They were first reported in the Zone at 11 o'clock that morning, the 13th. I drove down with two of our committee members to meet them, just a small de- tachment at the southern entrance to the zone. They showed no hostility though a few moments later they killed twenty refugees who were frightened by their presence and ran from them. For it seems to be the rule here, as it was in Shanghai in 1932 that anyone who runs must be shot or bayoneted. Mean- while we were busy at headquarters disarming soldiers who had been unable to escape and had come to the Zone for protec- tion. We assured them that if they gave up their equipment their lives would be spared by the Japanese. But it was a vain promise. All would have preferred to die fighting than to be taken out and shot or sabred or used for bayonet prac- tice, as they were later on.

There was still some shell fire that day but very little that landed in the Zone. We discovered some fragments of shrapnel in our yard that evening; Dr. Wilson had a nar- row escape from shrapnel bits that came through one of the new university dormitories but there were no casualties. Communications building, the most beautiful in all Nanking, with its superb ceremonial hall was in flames but whether from shell fire or started by the retreating Chinese, we do no

know.

The

On Tuesday the 14th, the Japanese were pouring into the City: tanks, artillery, infantry, trucks. The reign of terror commenced and it was to increase in severity and horror with each of the succeeding ten days. They were the conquerors of China's Capital, the seat of the hated Chiang Kai Shek Government and they were given free rein to do as they pleaded. The proclamation on the handbills which airplanes scattered over the city saying that the Japanese were the only friends of China and the Chinese and would protect the good, of course meant no more than most of their other statements. And to show their sincerity they raped, looted and killed at will. Men were taken from our refugee camps in droves, we supposed at the time for labour but they have never been heard of again nor will they be. A colonel and his staff called at my office and spent an hour trying to learn where the "six thou- sand disarmed soldiers" were. Four times that day Japanese soldiers came and tried to take our cars away. Others in the meantime succeeded in stealing three of our cars that were elsewhere. On Sone's car they tore off the American flag

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