June 11.
From traffic in the Nanking Road or Avenue Edward VII to the misgovernment of China seems a far cry. And yet we think there is a direct connexion to be traced between the two; and every foreign driver, suddenly jamming on his brakes with equal damage to his tyres and his temper, because a Chinese has mooned off the pavement under his wheels or because it has occurred to a ricsha coolie, with equal unexpectedness, that the other side of the road looks nicer, is, perhaps, not far from the secret of the agelong problems of China which so much vex the European. Cast the thought back for a moment to London or any other British city where traffic is dense. There are, no doubt, many things in London which—foreigners might and do criticize. But there is one thing which they all agree in admiring, and which they send their officials to study: and that is London's management of her traffic. The policeman raises his arm and the whole stream of vehicles behind him stops. There is no fuss, no shouting, no banging of one conveyance against another. Everything is perfectly orderly. Presently the _policeman, with a wave of the arm, uncorks that particular stream and stops up another, with the same ease, the same orderliness, the same utter absence of all excitement.
What is the secret of this" magical control? It is simply that, for nine-tenths of the management, London traffic manages itself. The policeman on point duty is, in fact, hardly more than a signalman giving signal for which every driver is always on the look out. Every driver and every pedestrian in a London street is continually conscious of the presence of other drivers and pedestrians, and realizes that the smooth evolution of the whole crowd depends on this consciousness of every unit for every other unit. But in a Chinese street or in one where Chinese predominate, there is none of this sense of mutual responsibility. When the point policeman stops a flood of ricshas emerging from a cross street into the Nanking Road, in nine cases out of ten the foremost man pulls up with a sudden jerk and those behind bang into him and each
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.