Mar, 18.
Tun departure to-day of the great P, & O. liner Naldera, her every cabin filled with residents of the Far Bast, marks the culminating point of the annual exodus Homewards. Many have gone already, many more doubtless are yet to go. But while the choice of routes and the luxuries that shipping lines offer are far more extensive than when the P. & O- Company instituted the practice of a through ship to and from England in. spring and autumn, the indefinable prestige and dignity which surrounds these vessels gives to this annual departure special signi ficance and revives for the moment the feeling of romance in going Home, which the ease and frequency ' wherewith the Voyage is now accomplished have almost stifled. There is something in the appearance of a P. & O., in the very rake of her} fennels, which warms. the Briton's heart, a sense of magnificent disdain about her for everything that sails the seas, which strikes 'a sympathetic chord within him. More than! any other craft afloat she seems the supremacy of his country's mercantile marine; tod that she is ready to pay for her pride is shown by the fact that of all her sisterhood not Joss than 127,000 tons were lost by submarine attack during the war, is, perhaps, only the normal experience of every year—just as every rainy season seems rainier and' every drought more dry than any we: remember=that this spring an unusually large number of friends would appear to be leaving for Home. For weeks past we have all been assisting them to "'eat their way] out', have assured them in more or less harmonious chorus and usual three cheers and good fellows"? and have stretched an already cracking overdraft just o little bit further to make them parting presents. Yet two days after their steamer's smoke has vanished on the horizon, it is as if they had never been. Their place knows them no more and the affairs, to which so recently their presence seemed indispensable, manage to get along comfortably enough—without them, Such a phenomenon is certainly not peculiar to Shanghai although the rate at which we live in this busy town makes it more noticeable. But that it itaplies no real forgetfulness _is shown. by the warmth with which we greet our friends on their return. There is no pleasanter experience in life than $9 come back" to Shanghai,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.