• A few months later I happened to read Andrew Stuttaford’s  National Review blog in which he said he was currently reading ‘Manchukuo Incident’ and quoted from Gareth’s last letter home to his parents: • " …we came to a huge collection of mud houses, with some stone in the middle surrounded by hills. It was Kalgan, the outpost for trade between the Mongols and China. There, two magnificent cars were waiting for us. We were to be the guests of Mr. Purpis, a Latvian, the "King of Kalgan" who is the chief trader in Inner Mongolia and sells about 30,000 horses each year to the Chinese Army. Our chauffeur drove us through the dirty town to a kind of mud-wall fortress on the outskirts of the town. It was Wostwag, the company for trading with the Mongols, a German firm…"