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it while soldiers engage in a man hunt etc., etc.,
For
December 31st. A comparatively quiet day. the first time no cases of violence are resorted for the night. The Japanese are busy with their New Year repara- tions. Two days of holiday are announced. We dread them for it means more drunken soldiers. Refugees are advised to stay indoors. Rabe invited our household to his house for dinner and lighted his Xxas tree for us and cach of us received a New Year's card with our Zone emblem a circle with a Cross within it in Red signed by all 22 of the foreign community in Nanking. He also entertained us with some of his experiences in South Africa. On his walls hang some magnificent trophies of the hunt.
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There is perhaps no purpose to be served by going further with this story and telling of acts of horror that have been committed since. It is now the 11th of January and while conditions are vastly improved there nas not been a day that has not had its atrocities some of them of & most revolting nature. With the arrival on the 6th of three representatives of the American Embassy and on the 9th of both the British and German Embassies we feel a little more assurance that conditions will still further improve. But only last night I drove past four fires that had just been started and saw soldiers within a shop starting a fifth. There has not been a day since December 19th that fires have not been started by Japanese soldiers. And Kroeger . managed to slip out of the East gate the other day, tells us that all the villages as far as he went some twenty miles, are burned and that not a living Chinese or fare animal is to be seen.
We are at last in touch with the outside world, for last Sunday I got our house connected up and we now have electricity Fortunately too, for our stock of kerosene and candles was just giving out. At our Committee head- quarters we had current a few days earlier. Only the Japanese are supposed to have electricity, though, so we are not advertising the fact. Then we have seen a couple of issues of a Shanghai Japanese paper and two of Tokyo Nichi Nichi. These tell us that even as early ad December 28th the stores were rapidly opening up and business re- turning to normal, that the Japanese were co-operating with us in feeding the poor refugees, that the city had been cleared of Chinese looters and that peace and order
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