ABSTRACT
The weather was unusually close and oppressive on May 31st 1925. At intervals a shower of close-dropped rain would come spilling down, as pitiless as the criminal bullets of the day before, when Shanghai, the great city of the East, had been the scene of a drama that had ripped away the mask of civilization to reveal the beast in man. Now, everything was quiet, and the tall Western-style buildings, which reared up against the sky and looked down unmoved on the boulevards that had yesterday run with blood and been strewn with bodies, seemed to be thinking: it’s all past now . . .
