This is the hardest of all to write^1-116. It was my home for ten years where I had many good and even beautiful times till the President Harrison started slowly down the Whangpoo September 14, 1941 - a day earlier than originally intended. No visitors were allowed aboard but somehow two of Carroll Alcott's ''pals'' had managed to make a last minute attempt to get him in one way or another. We had all left many friends behind - to what, we didn't know^1-117. Although Shanghai had been through four years of war, at first in the very thick of it, the city had been seething with talk of even worse things to come for many months. Many friends who were forced to be left behind, and most of them are still there, had come down to the Custom's jetty to smile a sad farewell, or still further with us by walla walla^1-118 (motorboat taxi) to the very ship's side itself. An added sadness was having to leave faithful servants and pets and not having any assurity provision could be made for them. In my own case the friend who thought he'd be able to keep an eye on the servants was killed a day or two after the December 8 fighting broke out. A faithful friend and I had been trying to make satisfactory arrangements for days for my chum and play-fellow of years, ''Lady,'' a lovable wire-haired fox terrier. It had to be left that Dr. Noble of the Blue Cross Dog Hospital on Edinburgh Road and my friend would do all they could, and I know they would, but it is hard to tell what may have occurred in the dreadful days that came. Except for direct news from Gripsholm repatriates or about them I have never been able to learn anything except hearsay here and there about ten or so especially intimate friends still in the Far East, although I cabled a few minutes after the Pearl Harbor news came over the air (hoping some message might slip through) and have tried the usual channels since. Where ''Lady'' was concerned I could for the time being only say, which I read somewhere once, and with the hope events would some day prove it false:

I wasn't particularly concerned regarding my chauffer since he was a ''substitute'' who had been working a week or two only. He had come around early one morning following the inexplicable disappearance of the regular man the night before. Wallace, the representative of a large British firm, and I were out driving when Wallace recollected that he should pay a short call in the ''Badlands'' (under control of the Nanking puppet regime; in other words, of course, Japanese). When the substitute heard our destination he stopped the car and ran like fury, although he had driven to a similar locality only a few days before. This is simply indicative of the temper of the times. The chauffer that was with me most of the time in Shanghai had been driving for the Japanese for over a year. The other servants were a different matter and we had been together long enough to know each other's habits, and even ''squeeze'' (which, within reason, is a perquisite and not pilfering) was an amicable matter.

Japanese hirelings had been intimidating chauffers and driving private vehicles off the streets of Shanghai, through the Japanese lines, and on to such places as Nanking for some time before we sailed. The ''business'' rose to such proportions that there was a persistent story the insurance companies made a dicker with the Japs to leave cars alone in which they had an interest. Whether true or not, it is about the only way the companies could have protected themselves under the conditions prevailing. News reached me on February 17, 1944 that the Japs had got what was left of my car although I had made arrangements before leaving to get the greater part of its worth. A letter reached New York January 19, 1943 which had been mailed me in Shanghai December 5, 1941, without the slightest clue as to where it had been in the meanwhile, and many had similar experiences.

We all were leaving much unfinished and up in the air; many friends and business confreres, some of whom were up against it even in the normal way. In my own case there was the close friend for whom a diagnosis after consultation was pessimistic, another already in hospital and in pain for a serious operation, and another, a Russian, very much worried regarding an old father in Kiev (and with reason^1-119). Our General Manager and friend, F.J. Twogood, remained behind. He passed on in the Mayo Clinic in 1944 from causes undoubtedly directly attributable to his three months incarceration in the infamous ''Bridge House,'' which is certainly more correctly described as the House of Terror. (It is possibly worth noting that some survivors maintain there was a corporal there who showed some signs of inherent decency.) It is said^1-120 that Maurice Speelman, the head of large French real estate interests, was held in the Bridge House until he would ''sell'' a valuable piece of property^1-121. At least some of the heroic Tokio fliers are supposed to have been in the Bridge House for a time^1-122.

We were all worrying about the staffs left behind. Many were to be interned. Apparently some of our Chinese and Japanese staff were to go into partnership in the Chinese restaurant business!

The plans for a long needed official U.S. building (to house the Consulate, U.S. Court for China, etc.) had long since gone by the board. The two British regiments, the Seaforth Highlanders and the East Surreys, had been withdrawn in 1940. The [U.S.] Marines were soon to march out (in time to participate gloriously at Bataan) which cut in two the value of the Chinese dollar in Shanghai, which shortly thereafter was to be dubbed the ''City of Desperate Hunger'' in the American press. Even normally, and in spite of an excellent police force and well lighted streets, Shanghai is a Mecca for the criminal class. There had been fear of poorly lighted streets, if lighted at all, for months. England and America seemed unable to supply sufficient bottoms to keep up the usual reserves of oil, and the Japanese put obstacles in the way of building up the seriously depleted coal piles. The French company's diesels depend entirely on oil, and the boilers of the (American) Shanghai Power Company (the largest generating station of its kind in the world) partially on oil but more on coal. Luckily the lines are hooked-up so that, in a small way, a temporary emergency can be taken care of. There had already been serious rice shortage and there was the dread of rice riots which could be very serious indeed. The Chase Bank still had the 25,000,000 dollars bought under the Pittman bill and which the Japs had successfully blocked sending out^1-123 - in fact they had once had it turned back after it had left the vaults on the way to America. The Chase Bank, in the fine new Liza Hardoon Building, also had the most modern safe deposit system in the city, except safety seemed somewhat less assured when ''risk for loss due to seizure by Japanese entirely the responsibility of the box renter'' (the words those of a bank official - I'm not sure they were in print).

Don (R.D.) Chisholm was to become a minor Lord Haw-Haw^1-124 (though later fell out with the Japanese and was interned) but was then the proprietor of the Shopping News, more or less a scandal sheet whose weekly appearance generally created a little excitement. Mr. Lee, the fine elderly Cantonese gentleman of the Jade Store on Nanking Road, was soon to be no more.

The excellent Shanghai American School on Avenue Petain, which graduated many direct into American colleges, became the headquarters of the Japanese Gendarmerie before long had passed. A friend had bought a piece of property opposite the school shortly before we sailed and through the courtesy of a former ''mayor''^1-125 of Frenchtown the building permit was rushed through, but who knows whether the construction was ever started?

''Put'' and ''Slim''^1-126 sometimes seemed like inseparable Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee (although they were both rangy!) after hours and it was known that their favorite refreshment was an occasional Cuba Libre before and after Shanghai was Free China, but they are (temporarily) separated now! Put got away in time to take up his duties as a Naval Reserve officer, but Slim cabled from 'Frisco in early September ''Hold the war - I'm on the way'' and, coming the rather circuitous way he'd planned, he must have arrived just about in time.

I was in hospital for a while in late August and then home for a week or so which then happened to be on Route Dufour next the Masonic Temple with the American flag always flying atop and only a few yards from my bed. It was muggy, murky weather with the ''Paddy-got-drunk'' frogs calling their wives being about all to break the monotony of the long nights. However, some friends kindly arranged a most welcome change one night and a young singer from the Ukraine who had followed some singing master to Shanghai, but who refused to sing in any of the local night spots, most courteously and obligingly ''entertained'' in the next room. Her beautiful voice was in sharp contrast to the Japanese ''Marching Song'' (that's the only description I know of it, but many know it all too well), snatches of which we could hear coming from the other side of Siccawei Creek, and which is ill-boding, ominous music, if music such it could be called.

We were probably leaving some friends never to see again. Those of us who do get back somehow some day would probably see many changes. We were leaving much ugliness - and beauty, such as the turquoise blue ''Florida sky'' domes of the Russian church on Route Paul Henri. Already wide Avenue Joffre was in process of being widened further near the church, and we were depriving Shanghai (and the Far East in general) of Carroll Alcott, who lived almost opposite the church. He was an anti-Japanese institution (see his My War with Japan) and most foreigners eagerly awaited the news he put fearlessly over the air for so long. The Japs directly or indirectly tried to kill him, bomb his station, and drive him out of town. His references to the ''new odor''^1-127 in East Asia and ''This broadcast is by courtesy of the Bakerite Company. The jam is by courtesy of the Japanese Army'' were characteristic. The army had had to call in the navy's powerful heavy transmitters to help jam his shortwave broadcasts! This jamming continued a long time in spite of American protests. (It helped to tell the time when on volunteer duty at ''B'' post. There was a radio there, to help pass time, so old that about the only distinct thing that came over was the jamming!) I was once taken for Carroll when looking for an apartment in Frenchtown and have always liked to believe that such little resemblance there may have been was as to voice and not girth!

(The Bakerite Company was backed by the Hennigsen Produce Company who, among other things, had very successfully introduced ice cream, candy bars and Eskimo pies to the Shanghai market on a large scale. Tom Scanlon didn't do so badly with his Sun Maid raisins, and he, personally, was very popular, too. Jimmy James^1-128 made and lost several fortunes. When he left the Navy he opened an all night restaurant serving good eats but nothing to drink except good American coffee and this decided innovation made him a fortune! He lost one of his fortunes in a venture called Luna Park, a kind of miniature Coney Island.)

The voice of the Chinese man on the street was ringing in the ears of many of us: ''Amelica too muchee talkee talk, no do. Makee sell too muchee bomb bad Japan man.'' (It is only too true that we had daily heard flight after flight of bombers droning overhead enroute to their mission of death in the interior once Shanghai was taken, but it is also of course true that Japan had built up a stockpile of scrap for use besides the street car rails, etc., of some of our big cities we were currently sending them until, at long last, sanctions intervened^1-129. Japan did a little supplementing on her own and her ''Little Tokio,'' the Hongkew section of Shanghai, was headquarters for loot. Many manhole covers and whatnot were stolen from the streets and other easily accessible places to wend their way Japanwards, although frequently through junk dealers to make all ''legal''! (Probably the famous bronze lions in front of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank have now followed suit. These were of about the size, posture and expression of the lions on the yellow marble staircase of the Boston Public Library, and their forepaws and tails were worn and shiny by multitudes of passers-by having rubbed them for luck.) The Occidental attitude towards Manchuria, the Nine Power Treaty, Japanese ''tests'' such as the Panay, etc., made it very difficult for a would-be friendly but much bombed China to understand our position (or to understand it ourselves) and such liberals as may have been left loose in Japan must have felt let down, too. Hollington K. (''Holly'') Tong^1-130 had made an impassioned appeal to America over the radio on the eve of the 1937 hostilities and events have only too well proved the truth of his broadcast.

So there was our merry (?) little crew all in the boat and while the Custom's clock gradually disappeared it was to appear later in New York flying bravely at the masthead of the Shanghai Evening Post and Mercury (American Edition) as a good augury for the future.

Shanghai (''on the sea'') is 12 miles up the Whangpoo River from Woosung. As you go up stream (against an often six to eight knot current), you go by the Pootung peninsula to port and shortly come to the several miles long Hongkew district (with Chapei behind) on the starboard, with its many shipping piers. This has been ''Little Tokio'' (in fact they have even kept Tokio time - an hour ahead of Shanghai) since 1937 and an area of strong Japanese influence for years before that. This long but narrow strip was once held for a while as the ''American Concession'' by a partner in the famous old American firm of Russell & Company, who was concurrently American Consul, on his own initiative, but this was repudiated by Washington six months later. It was always supposed to be part of the International Settlement, but except for a slight amount of cooperation with the International Police (often putting obstacles in their way!), the Japanese arbitrarily took it over, refused to let the British buses continue their run, and filled it with garotski (gangsters) and ronin (outlaws) who were willingly used by the infamous Special Service Section (Hitler's ''SS'' have nothing on them!) of the Japanese Army. You then come to Soochow Creek which is the dividing line between Hongkew and the rest of the Settlement, and over which the famous Garden Bridge passes. By this time you are on a tender, pass the Public Gardens with the extensive British Consular grounds behind them, and come to the Custom's Jetty and the center of the business district. A couple of blocks further is Avenue Edouard VII on the far side, Avenue Edward 7th on the near (and policed correspondingly) as it is the dividing line (and once also was a creek) between the International Settlement and the French Concession, usually referred to as Frenchtown. Unlike the Settlement, Frenchtown was considered as being part of the soil of France although it was given up by Vichy to the Wang Ching-wei puppet outfit in February 1943. Many Americans resided in Frenchtown (although most of their business was in the Settlement) and the large French Club (Cercle Sportif Francais) was the most popular mixed club in the city, offering tennis, billiards, swimming, dancing, cards, afternoon teas on the lawn, good food and the usual drinks. There was quite a little community on broad Avenue Petain where the Community Church and the American School are located. Four mile long, almost straight as a die, Avenue Joffre leads right out from the heart of the city and is often called ''Moscow Boulevard'' since so many Russians are to be seen on it.

After about a mile, Nanking Road leads into Bubbling Well Road and is the main artery leading out of town in the Settlement.

Roy Chapman Andrews in Under a Lucky Star mentions something to the effect that he could see something to Hong Kong but didn't think much of Shanghai, and after living in Hong Kong so many years I must say that during my first few months in Shanghai^1-131 I was inclined to agree. However, Shanghai is a huge spread out very cosmopolitan city and it surely grows on one, or it did on me. It is nothing whatsoever like Hong Kong in physical aspects. Shanghai is extremely flat and the surrounding rivers and creeks are muddy - and dirty. The nearest real rise in land occurs at the Shanghai hills (so-called by courtesy!) 15 miles away. With the necessary surface work it is a ''natural'' aerodrome running miles each way, and less than 1,000 miles from the industrial heart of Japan. (There is already a nucleus, the old Lungwha and Hungjao fields plus all that the Japanese have built.)

Shanghai is a city of great contrast, as well as size and importance. Wealth and abject poverty live side by side. There is a tremendous amount of night life^1-132 (some of the ''all'' night variety) although residents couldn't keep up the pace! They are more apt to think of Shanghai as a city of sandbags^1-133, barbed wire and armed forces (and shootings and bombings) which it also was. The Chinese Benevolent Society normally picks up around 25,000 to 30,000 bodies yearly (mostly from the streets) and the burden is heavily accentuated with the influx of population and the terrible times the city has undergone for many years past.

The tallest buildings outside the North American continent are in Shanghai, the Park Hotel being the tallest there^1-134. The Broadway Mansions, which seems to be so constructed that the wind always whistles through it (which is very cheering on a hot summer day), seems to have been shown quite frequently in American newspapers, and is on the Hongkew side of Soochow creek. The American Club^1-135 is downtown on Foochow Road and consists of five principal floors (Italian marble having been laid outside the top floor at appreciable cost for some reason) and has about fifty bedrooms. The original cost was about 300,000 dollars (U.S.). Before we had sailed there was considerable talk about selling it in view of the trend and prospect of the times, but in spite of the financial angle I'm glad to say that patriotic sentimentalists refused to approve such sale and the American flag was kept flying over it to the last. Carl Crow, the author of Four Hundred Million Customers, etc., and now with the OWI, is largely responsible for its very good library. The Club was always the scene of a Fourth of July stag party (and it was inevitably hot) and in years past the scene of an elaborate Washington's Birthday ball. (I have many recollections of the American Club, but two seem to stand out vividly. In times of special trouble the bar was sometimes thrown open to the police, volunteers, etc. for sandwiches and other refreshments. There are two large tables where more than the more usual four or five can foregather. One of these was filled, and the Irish sergeant, or rather Irish giant, who walked in happened to pick that. He apparently had been off duty for some time, pulled up a chair, sat down and prepared to ''make room for more'' by unlimbering a couple of automatics and slapping them on the table. He had a table to suit his own size pronto as none of us hung around to see whether they were loaded or not. The other experience was on me. We had been going over some lists in the office to be sure there were no special friends of ours who were not buying our products. Either the list or my memory was at fault as I recalled Eddie Nelson as being one of them and, happening to see him just entering the bar, I followed instead of keeping on for a book as intended. I made an opening feint or two and then started in and he led me on. He let on after I'd talked myself hoarse that he'd never strayed from the fold, and was still kidding me about it when we ran into each other during an air raid alarm in New York in 1944.)

The Columbia Country Club was the American mixed club in a lovely setting and having many regular adherents. The entrance is ivy-covered and a beautiful garden swings off to the left, a swimming pool, squash courts, and bowling alleys being to the right. There is plenty of room for tennis, soft ball, and sun bathing. Many summer days were enjoyably started by breakfast served on the portico running around the pool. (The French Club pool was much larger, but not so much in the open.) There were a few rooms for residents and there was always a long waiting list for the limited number of non-American members allowed by the by-laws. It was recently reported that 300 Britons (including 60 children) are interned there.

''The'' (British) Country Club^1-136 is on Bubbling Well Road, and only a few minutes from the center of town, although in the old days its site was then the ''country.'' ''The'' (British) Shanghai Club took about the same place in Shanghai of old as did the Hong Kong Club in Hong Kong, and is still a venerated institution. It was once famed as having the longest bar in the world (but in spite of that you'd better be careful not to usurp an old member's favorite spot!) and is now said to be headquarters for the Japanese ''Naval Landing Party.''

Shanghai land is ''soft'' and the heavier buildings are erected on rafts formed by sinking adjacent piles to a depth, say, of eighty to ninety feet. Much of this piling is done by hand, laborers swinging on ropes to lift a weight of 500 or 600 pounds before it is tripped, all of course to the accompaniment of the ''Hay Ho'' (or whatever we do decide to call it!) chant. The Cathay Mansions, a tall building opposite the French Club, is said to have been built in two main sections with a tilt of some inches towards each other for additional support, but that, due to some shifting of the ground, this sloping has increased to more than originally contemplated. The periodical floods in Shanghai do not help in a case like this. These floods are the dickens and all, and are caused by a backing-up of the sewage system after a heavy rain and when the Whangpoo is high. Some claim that the engineers did not allow a sufficient factor of safety to take care of the situation, which seems primarily caused by the Japanese having removed some of the equipment of the Whangpoo Conservancy Board - for example, the largest suction dredger in the world (which originally came out ''via Suez'' under its own power). The WCB has for years done wonderful work in keeping the Whangpoo navigable for big ships, riprapping the banks, building and maintaining sea walls, etc. When these floods occur, the water rises to two or three feet in some sections of the city, rickshaws (when available!) are called into play even to get across the street, and the following morning will find hundreds of cars stalled in the streets, principally from wet ignition.

Traffic in Shanghai is quite a problem even ordinarily. There are buses, street cars, trucks, motor cars, trackless trolleys, push carts, rickshaws and pedestrians, all going at different pace and in diverse directions. A fair percentage are generally gawkers from the country and their aimless meandering adds to the complications. Many Chinese believe it good joss to cross a street in front of a motor car - it surely is if they make it!

Accidents alone keep the police forces busy, and the Settlement, particularly, has been fortunate in the highly organized protection that has been built up. The Settlement force consists of about 6,000, of whom 500 are Caucasians, and at times has been supplemented by the Russian regiment of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps who are on a paid basis. Ward Road Gaol (Jail) has a capacity of 7,000 and is probably the largest municipal jail in the world. The combined capacity of the Frenchtown and Chinese jails is also about 7,000. While most of the inmates are in for minor offenses, some of the minority would make our gangsters look like pikers. Riot squads are well equipped and even in quiet peace times some of the more dangerous localities are patrolled by squads in bullet-proof vests. Sikh police are a prominent part of the Settlement force.

On one of my early visits from Hong Kong the usual rounds (which principally included seeing the insides of various buildings) became rather boring and there was an inclination to really ''see'' the city. A rickshaw seemed the best way and a little circular trotting around was indicated by the sign language. It grew darker and darker and we went gaily on, later developments indicating that all the time we must have been making a bee-line for somewhere. We finally managed to find some people by the roadside who spoke Cantonese and I had just enough words in that dialect to find the way to the nearest railway station and get back several hours late for dinner. The best way to see Shanghai is to have some idea where you're going.

In days of yore and the horse and carriage a picnic to far away Bubbling Well (now only a muddy trickle when it can be seen at all) helped pass a Sunday as the round trip was about 10 miles. Later came the motorcar and the ride around the Rubicon (Soochow Creek, Jungjao, Siccawei and back) which wasn't much longer. (Mme Helen Piper^1-137, her professional name as a fortune teller, was the proprietress of the Rubicon Inn, a change of environment for a tiffin - or a night. We once had some very amicable business dealings in regard to furniture which with less luck might have extended to the development of some magic mud at the Inn. This could be scooped up easily and was thought by some to possess radioactive properties and to be a kind of super ''Boncilla.'')

Nowadays you can motor much further afield on a beautiful Sunday - to Nanking, if you wish, but that would take longer. 60-mile-away Chapoo on that road is feasible for a picnic and a swim, or rather a wade, as it is a little shallow (and, or course, muddy). Chapoo is on Hangchow Bay where the Japs landed to cut in back of the forces defending Shanghai in 1937. It is also where the first plane carrying passengers Shanghai / Canton landed, and it was a long trip back to hospital for them^1-138.

One of the shorter trips is down Broadway and along the Whangpoo by dock after dock to 12-mile-away, breezy and cooler-than-Shanghai Woosung, where you can eat or stay at the small and comfortable (though not up-to-date!) Woosung Forts Hotel. (The Wake Island and Northern China Marines were reported as having been interned nearby for a considerable time at least, and that up to that time they were apparently fairly well treated, had their own doctors, but lacked medicines and, at first, sufficient warm clothing.) This ride would take you along the route of China's first railroad, which was torn up in 1876 after much hullabaloo, and the one locomotive last heard from as on exhibit in Formosa. Another route to Woosung is to cut through Chapei and the new Civic Center with its modernly laid out suburbs, and crowned by the beautiful Civic Building of typically Chinese architecture - partially started and partially finished just in time for the Japs to grab and riddle, respectively. You can walk (or even slowly drive your motorcar!) along the top of the heavy masonry sea wall to the south of the Yangste Kiang,^1-139, 1-140 10 miles north. (This sea wall is undoubtedly the modern outgrowth of something started much earlier. L. Carrington Goodrich in A Short History of the Chinese People says a sea wall extending 180 miles north of Hangchow was started in 910 A.D. during the Sung dynasty. This distance would include Woosung. The Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society for 1868 report considerable repairing and rebuilding of a wall that was started far earlier than that year, the history being somewhat as follows. The Hangchow bore comes in with a rush and, uncontrolled, could cause great damage^1-141. Wood was laid down for considerable stretches and proved unsuccessful. So did the efforts of hundreds of men in shooting catapaults at the onrushing tide! Later, the piling of stones and trees in a bamboo framework was found to do the trick, this being improved on eventually by the commandeering of all suitably large stones from quarries until a more permanent protection evolved.)

The ferry makes several stops between Shanghai and Woosung, and if you get off at one of these you can take a rickshaw (or the dilapidated bus) across Pootung peninsula to a two-mile-long beach though the water is shallow and turbid, and there are plenty of flies. However, liners and tramps can be seen in the distance and it is easy to imagine you are elsewhere. The best swimming is really in the pools (though even there the water is treated chemically) and the onlookers at, say, the spacious one at the French Club get cooled off about as much as the bathers.

Bathing at Pootoo is a little treacherous but the water is fairly clear and the two day trip to visit there makes a nice interlude. Pootoo is a four mile long island 50 miles east of Ningpo and is dedicated to Kuan Yin^1-142, the Goddess of Mercy. It is quiet and peaceful and there are about 1500 monks in residence. Many Chinese make junk pilgrimages of hundreds of miles to visit the spot.