Sin EH. Hornby's remarks, when giving away the prizes to the successful competitors at the recent Autumn Meeting of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps, had a certain fitness in them. He left us just after the re-organization of the Corps, consequent on the terrible events which took place at Tientsin in 1870. He returns to find the immediate danger past, and the Corps still an existing fact, and rightly congratulates the community that it has not been allowed to die a natural death.
Fortunate, indeed, is it that, situated as we are, there are no dark clouds hovering over the political horizon, but we never can know where they may gather or when a storm may burst upon us, and it is the duty of a com. munity like that of Shanghai to hold itself prepared for all eventualities, Toa great extent, we are thrown upon our own resources, and it behoves us develope and husband them so that, at any moment, they may be ready at hand when required. The real fact is—whatever may be said to the contrary—that communities are respected exactly in the proportion of their being able to command respect, and so long as foreigners in China stand shoulder to shoulder, irrespective of nationality, creed or language, we have little to fear from national or local disturbances. It is certain that we shall never provoke them, while we shall at all times be prepared for them. No doubt it is a very difficult thing to keep a corps like the Shanghai Volunteer Corps together; it receives little or none of the encouragement which
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.