anic throughout the town, and
there was a general _sauve qui peut_, a terrible retribution being
feared. The local Magistrate finally restored some semblance of order;
and after dark proceeded in person with some notables of the town to the
Japanese barracks to tender his regrets and to arrange for the removal
of the Japanese corpses which were lying just as they had fallen, and
which Chinese custom demanded should be decently cared for, though they
constituted important and irrefragible evidence of the armed invasion
which had been practised. The Japanese Commander, instead of meeting
these conciliatory attempts half-way, thereupon illegally arrested the
Magistrate and locked him up, being impelled to this action by the
general fear among his men that a mass attack would be made in the night
by the Chinese troops in garrison and the whole command wiped out.
Nothing, however, occurred and on the 14th instant the Magistrate was
duly released on his sending for his son to take his place as hostage.
On the 16th the Magistrate had successfully arranged the withdrawal of
all Chinese troops five miles outside the town to prevent further
clashes. On the 15th Japanese cavalry and infantry began to arrive in
large numbers from the South Manchuria railway zone (where they alone
have the Treaty right to be) and the town of Chengchiatun was
arbitrarily placed by them in a state of siege.

Here is the stuff of which the whole incident was made: there is nothing
material beyond the facts stated which illustrate very glaringly the
manner in which a strong Power acts towards a weak one.

Meanwhile the effect in Tokio of these happenings had been electrical.
Relying on the well-known Japanese police axiom, that the man who gets
in his story first is the prosecutor and the accused the guilty party,
irrespective of what the evidence may be, the newspapers all came out
with the same account of a calculated attack by "ferocious Chinese
soldiers" on a Japanese detachment and the general public were asked to
believe that a number of their enlisted nationals had been deliberately
and brutally murdered. It was not, however, until more than a week after
the incident that an official report was published by the Tokio Foreign
Office, when the following garbled account was distributed far and wide
as the Japanese case:--

"When one Kiyokishy Yoshimoto, aged 27, an employe of a Japanese
apothecary at Chengchiatun, was passing the headquart