Dee. 24.
Tue latest piracy episode on the China Coast—the outrage against the China Navigation Company's str. Tungchow, resulting among other things, in the master of the vessel being seriously wounded, will of.a certainty cause a great wave of public indignation, not so much against the pirates themselves ax against a continuance of conditions which permit such things to be possible after all that has been endured in this respect] during the last five years. The Tungchow piracy is more than an outrage by Chinese. pirates: it is public scandal which ought never to have been possible, and which is a deplorable reflexion Jon those basically responsible for the safety of British ships in Chinese waters. The story of the Tungchow piracy, so well summarized by Reuter at Hongkong, is but a repetition of the story of any or all of the numer-cus other piracies that have gone before it. The system of the pirates has been exactly the same, their personnel is probably, the same, and their lair, the Waichow district of the Province of Kuangtung, remains the same. And the piracy provides no new moral; teaches no new lesson. Grills'and guards, precautions and searches—all have been proved time and again to be utterly futile against the China his and bide his time to pirate, who has only to choose
make his venture a comple euccesa. The weak feature abet the whole system, or so-called system of piracy prevention on the China Coast is the absence of wireless telegraphy on the ships; that and nothing more.
Even five years ago, before [piracy was revived, the question ofthe general installation of, wireless apparatus on passenger-carrying vessels on the China Coast was an important one. As Piracy succeeded" piracy and murder and outrage succeeded murder and outrage, it became more than important—it developed into an urgent necessity. But, still, apparently, nothing of a concrete nature has been dont and now the matter is nothing Jess than vital: to the preserve: tion of the lives of those who travel in ships in these parts, to the shipowners themselves, and to the public generally, It brooks no further delay, and neither the authorities responsible nor the shipowners concerned can be permitted to bring about delay.
Let us be fair to the British shipowners more directly concerned and state the facts concerning wireless so far as they sre known by anyone not in the confidence of officialdom. The early piracies, round about the year 1921, showed without doubt or cavil that wireless on all vessels likely to be attacked was} the surest preventive. The late Commander Beckwith, when Har-hour-master at Hongkong, said so publicly more than three years go; the officers of the ships have been pressing the point on the Fongkong Government and the shipowners year after year; and gradually the shipowners came to the same point of view. Wireless sets were imported, and if]
are not available for every] British ship on the China Coast, we have good reason to believe that there are more than enough to fit every passenger-carrying ship. Many of the ships have actually had the wireless cabins built on board and the apparatus, complete in every detail, stowed ready for use. Two big British shipping companies appear to] have been fully reconciled to the inevitability of general wireless installations, for about eighteen months ago they started a wire-Jess school at Hongkong which, run under the eggs of the Hong-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.