"This is Arthur's!"

When the latest shipment of newsreels from the Chinese-Japanese war reached Manhattan last week, the city's Japanese Chamber of Commerce heard a rumor which caused it great discomfiture. The Chamber was under the impression that a shot of captured Japanese aviators exercising in their shirttails might bring shame on the Emperor's forces. As soon as the Chamber had a look at the films, however, its tranquillity was restored. The aviators had maintained their Oriental dignity even without their pants. The fact that the same batch of reels pictured the destruction to the huge and plainly marked Nanking Central Hospital during the announced Japanese air raids last month did not seem to bother Manhattan's Japanese Chamber of Commerce at all.

The Nanking bombing pictures on view last week were less gory than the Shanghai bombing pictures (TIME, Sept. 13), but were in some respects superior to them in their hair-raising immediacy. The Movietone, Universal and Paramount photographers who made them arrived at Nanking day before the promised raid, decided to stop at the Yangtze Hotel outside, the city wall because its roof commanded a good view of the railroad station, which they expected to be the prime object of the attack. Imagine their discomfiture next day when the Japanese planes droned out of the sky and headed not for the railroad station but for the power station, 300 yd. away from the Yangtze Hotel.

Wrote Paramount's hardworking, socialite Arthur Menken--son of famed and dressy Manhattan matron Mrs. S. Stanwood Menken--in a chatty letter received by his Manhattan chiefs last week: "The first few bombs went wide of the mark, splashing into ponds between the power house and the hotel, too close for comfort but . . . very nice for pictures. The following planes came in with greater accuracy and dropped three eggs directly on the structure itself. . . . During this attack . . . the Chinese anti-aircraft with, I believe, .50 calibre machine guns brought down a plane directly in front of the building. It was impossible to get more than just the actual crash because things were happening entirely too fast."

Adjourning to the roof of the Central High School near the hospital, Photographer Menken again had a bombing raid drop very nearly in his lap. "This time they headed smack for the hospital. Suddenly the leader went into a power dive and pointed directly where I was standing. Two bombs dropped from the plane and I could hear them coming for the building with that terrible whishing sound that says, 'This is Arthur's, this is Arthur's!' I ducked behind a door just in time. My car, which was next to the gate, was punctured by fragments in five places. ..."

"P.S. I am under suspicion of espionage or something by the Chinese for being on the spot for both bombings."

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