The letter which we published yesterday signed "'An Englishman," protesting against the Council's ruling on the subject of national companies in the Shanghai Volunteer Corps will not, we trust, be left unsupported by others who feel as he does. The self-contradiction of that ruling is so extraordinary that the Councill must either have no sense of humour at all, or its sense of ps humour is far too subtle for the ordinary mind to appreciate, If! "the idea of national companies is! an effective recruiting agency" why not make use of it to the fullest possible extent! If it tends to cleavage in the solidarity of the Corps, why have ever permitted it to exist? In point of fact, of course, if there is to be any cleavage in the Corps, it will not come from the British side. And if it does come, then the stronger the British section cas be made the better for the maintenance of authority in Shanghai. And to expand what our correspondent says, is it fair or just to accept a Scottish Company, an Austrian and a Scandinavian, and to prevent the niels from forming companies of English, Welsh, Irish and Colo-
their own? In short, the logic of the ruling is as bad as we trust its effects may not be on the work of re-cruising for the Corps. The only explanation possible is the old one to which we alluded the other day, that anyone may call himself or the enterprise in which he is interested by the name of his country except " British subject. That may be showing a proper spirit of modesty in normal times. In times like the present it will be described by most people in much terser and less printable language.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.