We must again offer our deep sympathy to the Japanese
nation which was visited by another violent earthquake on Saturday last. Two towns on the northern coast of the southern mainland, Toyooka and Kinosaki, have been almost wiped out by the shock and by subsequent fires, which as usual were responsible for the most for- midable damage. At present trustworthy news is scarce but there seems to be reason to hope that less than three hundred persons have been killed and that the earliest reports were exaggerated. We may thankfully assure ourselves that there has been nothing on the scale of the disaster of 1923, -and, of course, the material damage is small by comparison. None the less, the loss of life is sad and we realise that the unkindly violence of nature, uncontrollable by man, severely tests the fortitude of our friends in their volcanic island.
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