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Show floor corridor, those less seriously wounded, or who could wait, were- eared for in an emergency ward set up in the basement of the church nearby. There were more bad injuries from close-up explosives than before, because tbe residential district which was destroyed was one of the poorer ones. Because of their poverty the people hesitated to leave lest their little all be stolen,-and were trapped. The Baptist mission property was badly demolished, leaving only Miss Argetsinger's house standing, with of course considerable damage to plaster and glass. The gatekeeper had begged his wife to flee to the open country but she refused to leave him. Her body could not be found that night, but the next day he recognized a foot and shoe in a nearby tree!! Such tales could be multiplied by hundreds, here, and across the seas! One boy of teen age had a broken leg before the raid. His father is dead, and his mother could not carry him, and was too poor to hire a riksha, so he was left behind. The house burned down, and a first aid worker rescued him, but not before his other leg had been broken, and both arms badly burned. We operated by candle light till nearly midnight on the most exigent cases, and then "Early Beginnings" took me home. We had to go by a circuitous route for the street we usually travel on was bombed two thirds its length. I was relieved to find the campus unharmed, as from the hospital windows we feared one big fire was rather close to the new hospital buildings. It has seemed like Divine intervention that at least five times in July, after we had been given the signals, and were prepared for the worst, that thunder storms arose, and turned the enemy away, for flying over th®m high mountains in storms is more than they care to face. It is scant comfort at best however, for you well know that some place has to suffer, even if you were spared. On the afternoon of the raid, also, there came a sharp twenty minute shower, which helped materially in checking the fires. We also learned later that two groups of planes that were following in the trail of the first were discouraged by that rain and headed in another direction. Our medical work has met with two tragic disasters this summer. First, in April, the burning of the University Dental Unit and Pathological Laboratory, with the loss of hundreds of thousands of of dollars in specimens and equipment. And in May the total loss of our Women's Hospital m the city by fire. These fires both occurred at night under circumstances which lead us to believe they were set at the instigation of the enemy,-particularly as they were coincident with the destruction of seven high schools in and near Chengtu. One girl was caught redhanded, and admitted that she had been promised pay for setting a successful fire! Our women's hospital was tbe only one in the city, and sorely needed. All the 105 patients were safely taken out, under great difficulty, as the whole long building was a roaring mass of flames before anyone from outside eould get there to help. The internes crawled out on their hands and knees with patients on their backs at the last. None of the equipment could be saved,-including the contents of my stockroom over which I had spent many months. When I arrived at seven the next morning it wa3 to find a writhing mass of wreckage within the four walls. We took in the women patients on the fourth floor of the men's hospital, sending the men to the dog surgery building and the church basement. Later we opened a temporary obstetrical unit in a school building, and also evacuated convalescing chronic medical cases to that building, which eases the pressure somewhat. But we are operating in crowded quarters, with inadequate linen and supplies, and as a teaching hospital it is all rather a mess. I have divided our remaining stock, together with the appreciated donations we have had from the International Red Cross, and other organizations, among seven foreign houses, and small storerooms, in the hope that if one or more get bombed we wont lose'e very thing again. Dr Robert Brown, who is to be our superintendent at the new hospital on the university campus when it is completed, is now on a short furlough. He is expected back about Christmas time, and I, for one, hope we will not need to occupy the new buildings till he comes to take control, and start things right. A somewhat brighter aspect of the situation here in West China is the indisputable fact that the migration of some fifty old million men, women, and children westward, and an important factor, that for the most part these are from the trained artisan, merchant, and intelligentsia class, has hastened progress and development along all educational and industrial lines in this part of the country. Before the war there were six colleges and universities in West China. Now there are sixty odd, scattered in more than forty districts, laboring under heavy odds as to books and scientific equipment, but preserving their entity, till that day shall come when war is no more. A decade ago the presence of a Chinese in Chengtu with a degrese from a foreign university would have been a matter for comment. Now there are over four hundred in the city of Chengtu with master's and doctor's degrees, from universities ranging from Chicago, Harvard, Toronto, Oxford, and Paris, on to Berlin! China's four hundred million are determined to resist Japanese despotism to the end, and if given a ghost of a chance will become a democratiefnation. If she is thrown back too long on Soviet Russia for aid and supplies, a tinge of communism may creep in. But basically the Chinese race, with its clan instinct, will not be likely to ever accept communism in its most radical form. Against the disheartening news of the ban placed on the Bible and Christian teaching in Japan, with the imperial edict that the people shall revert to Shintoism, is the picture presented in a letter by Dr Frank Price. He has travelled widely through China during this war and knows first hand of the conditions in the Chinese Christian church. Dr Price says, "Christianity will have a large place in China after the war, not alone because of the relief work done by missionaries and the churches, but because the meaning of Christianity is more widely understood and appreciated than ever before. Christians have definitely found their place in the life of the nation, meeting great human needs, in its hour of travail." |
