230 London Road, Tientsin, China.Dear Miss Woolley:
If I had wings I would fly to America right away to tell you something about our recent heartaches in these two months. Although you have retired yourself from the presidency of Mount Holyoke College, I believe that you would continue your one piece of work - that is the work for world peace.
I am sending you this letter thru an American friend who will mail for me in America. In this way this will reach you without censorship. Tientsin is under Japanese control since August the first. All incoming and outgoing mails are censored by Japanese at post office. We have no way of telling our friends the truth except thru friends who would carry our letters to America. I do not know if you have ever visited Nankai University at Tientsin. This was destroyed by Japanese serial force July 29th. Bombardment did not destroy all buildings, so oil was used to do further destruction. Concrete work could not be destroyed by oil so dynamites were used to do the finishing touch. The total destruction only took few hours. The university took the whole life of Dr. Po Ling Chang to build it from a home school to this present university. This work took Dr. Chang 37 years to build. Not only the university is in ruins but all her high schools for boys and girls, her primary school are in the same condition now. After the burning of the university for days we could not utter a word we only looked at each others but uncontrolable [sic] tears would run down from our cheeks. Japan is telling the world that she is chastising China. But what have we done to Japan that she is ruthlessly carrying on this war against us with all her modern deathly weapons. She said that we are anti-Japanese. We are not anti-Japanese as we are anti-militarists. Now she is carrying on her further ruthless massacre of civilian population by bombing our open cities like Shanghai, Nanking, Swatow, Hankow, Canton, Tientsin, Taiyuanfu, Sungkiang and Soochow. Where ever Japanese air force goes the bombarment [sic] is usually first aiming at cultural organizations. Shanghai College, Shanghai Library, Shanghai Laboratory, Nanking Health Station, Nanking Water Workds, Nanking Electrical Plant, Nanking Radio Station and many railway stations are all ruins. The construction of our ten years are practically gone. For years to come we would be useless to ourselves and others. Japan is calling this undeclared war incident. It is no incident whatever but a preplanned war against China in every sense of the word war. This is a war of aggression and destruction.
Madame Chiang has called attention to the world that all peace loving people must work together to halt these ruthless massacres of our innocent people. Women and children suffer the most for they are not as strong physically as men to escape themselves of raid dangers. In spite of protests of western powers Japan has repeatedly bombed Nanking. Dr. E. Fong Wu is still at Nanking. We are experiencing suffering day to day. We are not afraid to die. Our hospital was hit also by bombs. We did not move excepting moving our patients to basement at the time of bombardment. We do not mind to be killed instantly by bombs but how long will our nerves last we do not know. This constant bombing from city to city is most terrifying to our innocent people. I would not continue to tell you all about our heartaches and sorrow. But in this period of national life we women of China does [sic] ask you to help us to live thru this period with no other determination than to believe still in right. Right is still right and it never can be might is right. We do not ask the world for anything but a chance to live peacefully by ourselves and harmoneously [sic] with others. We even want our Japanese sisters to know that we Chinese women are not anti-Japanese but are anti-militarists. Japanese soldiers are fighting war of aggression and our soldiers are only resisting for defense. In spite of our suffering we believe we would come out victorious for we are defending our rights. We still believe that right is always right and cannot be otherwise. Your help is very much needed to halt this ruthless war of Japan against China.
Yours sincerely,
M. I. Ting