The Waterbury Democrat., 1937-08-14

miles up country. in the Peipins- Tientsin area, Japanese troops were storming the Nankow mountain pass. Southwest of Peiping, south of Peiping, skirmishers prepared the way for pitched battles.
 Inferno of Warfare
 Here, every man, woman and child was in an inferno of warfare, in Q world metropolis of 3,60o,0o0 people. Mothers in childbed, indi- viduals in hospitals, the helpless hundreds Of thousands who, con- verging on the international settle- ment, milled back and forth, like crazed animals seeking safety, were on e battlefield
 The blast of bomb, the splitting of machine gun bullets, the crash of anti-aircraft fire from Japanese criuser one block from the United Press ofiices, mingled with the screams of wounded or fear mad dened people in the streets
 A great bomb dropped at the cor- ner of the Tibet road and the Ave- nue Edward VII on the border of the International Settlement, and as those of the victims who could move crawled for shelter, fires spurted from nearby buildings
 To the rain of bomb fragments and bullets, there was added the burst Of shrapnel over the city
 Writers Among Wounded
 United Press correspondents moved among wounded, torn bodies, dead and dying, through pools of blood and piles of debris while the terrible din of firing continued To file this dispatch, 1t was necessary for me to jump through 6 broken plate glass window because the doorway of the Cathay hotel was blocked As John R. Morris, of the United Press staff, was starting in his car to cover e phase of the war, wheel was blown of outside the Palace hotel.
 There were many horrible sights to be seen. I covered the Shanghai war of 1882 and the Ethiopian war. But the one sight I shall never for- get came this afternoon.
 I saw e white woman, kneeling in the blood and wreckage in the Nanking road, trying to aid her q ughter in giving birth to e child as bullets, bomb fragments and de- bris flew about.
 Never Know How It Began
 How all this started may never be known. There had been two Chinese airplane raids over the Whangpoo river that splits the city. On the north side of the river, where the International concession fronts, the planes sought to bomb the Jap anese cruiser Idzumo, munitions laden, lying at the Japanese con- sulate wharf, and had gone down river bombing wharyes and Japan eSe navy bases. Two little Japan eSe planes. seeking the raiders, had done 6 bit of bombing of their own in the outSkirtg.
 All through the northern part of the city, there was fighting. Foreign corlsuls early in the day ordered all their citizens to evacuate every building north of the eoochow creek, which runs through the Inter. national Settlement, and to concen- trate in the southern part.
 Terror Stricken Masses
 Then concentrated there, lighting their. way through the terror Strick- en masses of Chinese who at times trampled the weaker ones in dis tfacted races to nowhere. At about D. m. the anti-aircraft guns of the Japanese cruiser of the water front burst into . fury of fire. No planes could be seen at first. Then two Japanese planes were overhead, They made a dash toward the Lunghua sir base southwest Of the city. People seemed to sense that something terrible was going to