Oct. 23.
WHEN Age lectures Youth on the folly. of reckless spending, and discourses smugly on the hardness of former days compared with present effeteness, does Age, one wonders, ever stop to-think of the hundred and one things which exist to-day as necessities, and which were, even thirty years ago, almost sJunknown? "Thirty years back few people knew the need for motor-cars, gramophones, broad-, casting sets, tennis courts and with all their at-
Few people felt the urge [to spend their nights in jazz, ithe cinema, the theatre and the jeabaret. These were temptations, in Shanghai especially, [which did not exist for the young man of those days. To-day they things exist all over the world, an expression of Man's illimitable craving for something new. They are, added to daily and they displace nothing. Spending power, it is true, has increased, but it hi not increased at the same ral modern luxuries become necessities, which explains why it is that the young men of today find it so much harder to save money than did their fathers, and more especially their grandfathers before them. Indeed, in this connexion it is rather' interesting to remember that modern theories of Econ-amics look upon the man, who ves money as a danger to Society, the argument being that to save is to reduce buying capacity and limit the powers of industry, thereby helping to add to the surplus of goods for which there can be no demand, To this argument, though it holds comfort for the spendthrift, may be attributed the remarkable and dangerous growth of the credit system, which is most strikingly exemplified in the United States and which has very extensive ramifications in Shanghai. to-day is undoubtedly a physically softer thing than it was in the past. But the demands which modern life makes fon mental and moral—stamina fare inconceivably greater. The young man of to-day who is to make a success of his existence has temptations and difficulties to overcome of which his grandfather never dreamed. Thodgh nominally he has more money to spend, he likewise has far more on which to spend it, and in drawing the line which separates necessity from luxury he is faced with a task of ever increasing difficulty, and one, moreover, which never ends.
Will the process be extended the years go by, the struggle growing harder with each generation? Or shall we at last get back to that simple life of which we all talk so much and practise so little?
Chowkiakow they burnt a number of victims alive, simply as v|a warning to others against reance. Such, more or less, has been the condition of Honan for three years past, and it is due to nothing but continual warfare between those who should be combining to govern the land. Such reports late specially instructive because they reveal precisely that sort of soil in which Kuomintang propaganda easily takes root and huge upheavals like the Taiping rebellion are nurtured. Already' the organization known as the Red Spears begins to take on formidable shape in North-central China and such movements spread quickly among desperate and famished men.. The dissolution of all central authority in China, which we have already seen, may descend to yet uglier depths of anarchy unless ° her, leaders take warning in time.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.