Aug. 31.
Since taking rank among the Rod Cross Hospital in the west six most important seaports of aubarl there were over 100 dead bodies has been and that when they left the world, Shanghai's euri whetted greatly in the wards". Why "it is cer-] ascertain where she stands tait" our correspondent does not among the cities.
A few yeas show, nor does the fact of there ayo the point was put to one of being "over 100 dead bodies in the greatest engineers who haz the wards" necessarily mean ever come as a consultant to that they "were killed by Ja-China, that there was no limit panese. We would not throw to the size to which Shanghai doubt on the intentional veracity might attain, and that in course of the late Dr. Meng but, during of time it "would inevitably the period in which he recovered dwarf London, New York, and consciousness, before his death. such teeming centres. He agreed, his mind may easily have been but with one very strong pro-in a very clouded state. As for viso—namely, that the conserv-Dr. Wheeler told our corney, work on the Whangpoo and we should like to Yangtze were maintained and hear a good deal more from Dr. Jextended.
Furthermore, he Wheeler himself as to the/emphasized his belief in the "evident signs of a struggle" and essential which must be what induced him to believe that "patients had evidently been shot or bayoneted as they lay in their beds." Unfortunately Dr, Wheel er is at present in England, Again, we do not doubt for a moment "Britisher's" sincerity. But we have had such extraord-mary experience of what "A' thinks "B" has told him in a moment of excitement (such as the state of affairs in Tsinanfu at the beginning of May must have induced in everybody residing there), when we have afterwards personally ascertained that "B" had said nothing of the kind, that we cannot yet accept the report of what Dr. Wheeler is supposed to have seen without his own evidence on the point Our correspondent asks whether we think "that in such a clash of arms all the atrocities were likely to be on one sid Certainly we do not. Our point la that we regard all reports of atrocities with the greatest suspicion, That is the unhappy experience born of the Great War. Accusations, one regrets to say, were undoubtedly manufactured in order to flog up public feeling to the necess ardour. Evidence was give! Admiral Sims in "The Nineteenth Century" about three years ago—and Admiral Sims Was as "pro-Ally" as any man could be—that with one or two Jmown exceptions, the German submarine commanders conduct-|j ed their attacks on merchantmen played by foreign commerce and the influence of foreign residents in the place, We need not refer to thi vents of the intervening period, but content our selves with the fact that we are still as interested as ever in knowing where we stand.
For that reason the census which is to be taken of Greater Shang! during the coming fortnight has special importance in our eyes. People talk readily of the figure of four hundred millions for the population of China as being x considerable over-estimate, though the Post Office does not think so, But the peculiar fea-ure at once presents itself that any figure for a place such as Shanghai almost certainly bound to be an under-estimate.
In the Kuo Min report yesterday the taking of the census, reference was made to the fears excited among the populace by the measure——fears of a poll tax. a new method of conscription, ete., of which the census paper ix to be the preliminary—and we know only too well that these will operate to prevent anything like an ap proximately accurate return being made. The Settlement authorities have had exactly the same difficulty in the past—the apprehension that if the names of thave resident in the dwelling are committed to they will be subject to which they only to in as humanely as possible, gave boats, and sometimes even towed the hants towards land as far as it was safe for the submarine herself to approach. During the last year of the war we received a report of German atrocities in East Africa which appeared t> he as well authenticated as any such report could be. Yet after the war we had the personal evidence of two British officers, who had been sent afl throu many the obstacle has only been overcome by getting some resident of the neighbourhood, a man who has the confidence of his fellows, to persuade the occupier to allow him to count the people in the house and write down the number. Evea then so many are missed that one authority on the work of census-taking gives the that the total arrived at is about twenty per cent. below reality.
Any smaller discrepancy not to be looked for in the Muni cipality of Greater Shanghai, but rather more. For at any rate the permanent and older resid-lents of the Settlement have seen the census taken for a long time now with no ill effects to themselves; whereas, so far as we remember, it has been attempted only on one or two occasions in the outside districts. Of course, it is better that the total should err on the small rather than the large side, for were it once bruited abroad that imagination had got the better of statistics, there would be an end to any claims by Shanghai to pre-eminence. What we are really waiting for is to see whether-the two million mark will be passed—of course we are including the population of the Settlement and French Concession, The last census of, the Settlement was taken in 1925, while there was one in the French Concession at the beginning of the present year. The latter is near enough in date to be valuable for the present statistics of the whole of combined Shanghai, but the Settlement is three years out of date, But there can be little doubt that the population in these two districts is in the neighbourhood of a million and a half, so when that of Greater Shanghai appears we may get a really striking figure, possibly much beyond expectations,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.