Religion: Honorable Confinement

Japanese treatment thus far of American missionaries in Japan and Japanese-held territory is "reassuring," the Foreign Missions Conference of North America reported this week. In some cases Americans and Canadians are still being permitted to do their work; in others, missionaries are detained in their own homes. "There are evidences," said the Conference, "that the Japanese authorities purpose to exercise the same consideration in treatment of North Americans which our Governments are said to be showing the Japanese within our borders."

First stray reports on U.S. missionaries in the path of Japan: Methodists said all their workers in Manila had been safely "evacuated to the mountain resort of Baguio" (which the Japs took five days later); five Catholics seized near Hong Kong were escorted by the Japanese to nearby Portuguese Macao and released; 16 missionaries headed by Methodist Bishop Ralph A. Ward reached Free China safely after fleeing from the occupied zone; one famed missionary, President J. Leighton Stuart of Yenching University, near Peking, was put into "honorable confinement."