duly 27.
Ir was to be expected that the letter from "Certificated Mariner'? which we published last Saturday should attract instant attention among those who have their business on the Great River. The anomalies which the writer reveals, at length indeed yet without any exaggeration, on a waterway so important must strike anyone not acquainted with the peculiar difficulties of the case as almost incredible. In the navigation of great rivers like the Yangtze or of others smaller but even busier, International Rules of the Road would prevail unless, as almost invariably we believe, superseded by local rules. On the Yangtze, as far as we understand, there are no local rules. And as if this were not anomaly enough, we find this further absurdity, that there appears nothing to prevent anybody from calling himself a pilot and from taking out a ship if he can persuade an owner to entrust him with one. it says much for the ability of the vast majority of men who pilot ships between here and Hankow that accidents are as few as they are.
It was to introduce some order into the navigation of the Yang-we, that the Woosung-Hankow Pilot Association set itself, now twelve years ago, to draft a set of regulations for the control of foreign pilots on the Lower Yangtze Which should be binding on all subjects of Treaty Powers. Who history of these regulations, too long to relate here in detail, is tragic and deplorable. Delayed by a variety of causes, first by revolutions in China, then by the Great War, they were eventually brought forward again in revised form, with amendments suggested by the American Chamber of Commerce and the Consul-General for Denmark, early in the present year. There is nothing in them about local rules of the road, it is true; but these, if necessary, would doubtless have followed in due course. On the other hand, there are minute directions as to the qualification of pilots, their apprenticeship and examination and the conditions of their licences. The regulations were not to be ap plicable to Chinese pilots, however, this exemption being allowed no doubt in order to hasten the adoption of the instrument. At the same time, it is evident that if these regulations had been adopted, underwriters would see that one of the men bound by them was employed. The General Pilotage Authority would have consisted of the Conguls at Shanghai the General Chambers of Commerce of Shanghai ard Hankow and the Coast Inspacfor: the Pilot Board would have included a representative of the Consuls at Shanghai, of the Shanghai General Chamber of Commerce, the Coast Inspector and a Senior Pilot. The whole scheme strikes one as admirably conceived and a credit to those who had undoubtedly devoted immense pains to its compilation. It was received with approval by all nations concerned excepting one—the Japanese, and that notwithstanding that the Japanese pilots themselves are understood to have fully agreed with the proposals and to have been ready and anxious to get themselves licensed. The Japanese Chamber of Commerce wrote that ''the Japanese Pilot Association has been in existence for many years with its peculiar history" and ''there are unsurmountable difficulties for its members to place themselves ut der the regulations as proposed' and the scheme was vetoed' by the Japanese Consular authorities acting, one many presume, at the instructions of the Government in Tokio. Unanimity in such a case being indispensable, the regulations were killed.
Closed corporations, for such the pilot body would certainly have been, have an unpopular sound and the paragraphs relating to pilots were probably not to the liking of Japanese merchants and especially to the minor shipping firms. Yet even thus the rejection of rules which every other nation had accepted and which are palpably of the first importance is as inexplicable as it is regrettable. As for the closed corporation objection, we suppose that every organized body of pilots in the world is that. It is
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.