The customary illuminated procession with which our French neighbours invariably commence their Fourteenth of July celebrations took place. on Wednesday night and, if it did nothing else, it certainly afforded immense pleasure to thousands of Chinese who lined the route from. the French Municipal Hall to the Park and, if they would only be as truthful as they are after sitting through a performance of "Peter Pan," there would be many hundreds of foreigners who would have to admit that they, too, thoroughly enjoyed it. The French and International Settlement fire brigades between them contributed ten beautifully decorated and illuminated motor cars, engines and other equipment, half a dozen bands were distributed along the formation, including a Chinese string orchestra in a decorated motor float, a company of highly useful looking Annamites marched in front and the rest was made up of about a couple of battalions of Chinese, grown ups and schoolboys and of course the Boy Scouts, carrying thousands of lanterns and banners, wheeling set scenes and bearing aloft various strange devices, A white elephant, with an clectrio bulb on his trunk balanced by another on the end of his tail, could be distinguished, but he was no bigger than a brown and green striped tiger similarly penalized by the handicapper, whilst a ver-milieu pig was larger than either. A-merganser could not be told from 2 Mother Carey chicken, but a colossal bat was identified and he in particular seemed to arouse the Chinese to enthusiasm.
The procession filed into the French Park under the archway of a representation of the Bastile, gorgeously illuminated and then split up, to allow of the closer inspection of the various models, some of which were mechanical and seemed intended to Yepresent various branches of the Municipality's activities. Then most of the French people and many of their friends adjourned to the Cercle Sportif Francais (whose buildings were also illuminated) and spent the yest of the evening in dancing.
Taerspay's Rounp or Events.
A stranger in Shanghai on Thursday might well have thought that the place was one big French colonial city, instead of only a part of it under French administration and the rest international. It probably is the intense patriotism of the French which hypotizes the others, but it is always the case that theirs is the biggest and most general celebration. The British have a solid,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.