Confirmation of the settlement of the Hongkong shipping strike having now been reorived, deep and general thankfulness will be felt. The strike began on January 13. Is has occasioned immense losses fax beyond the shipping industry at a time when business the world ever is least fit to bear loss, which, be it observed, will fall quite as heavily on Labour as on Capital; and, worse still, it has caused wtuch bitter feeling. No more re-grottable dispute between Chinese and foreigners (excepting of course, such an upheaval as the Boxer Year) can be recalled, even without the ugly intrusion of Communism. As regards the latter, 10 la to be hoped that cessation of the general strike will follow the shipping settlement. That is not a certainty owing to the extent the trouble has gained and the temper it has aroused. But we imagine that the Communists must have been surprised at the readiness with which the white population of Hongkong organized to do its own monial work. Like some others in laistory, they entirely miscalculated the stubbornness of the' race against which they had pitted themselves, and the lesson may do tham good. Tt was a peculiarly dastardly thing to call out the hospital servants and one would be glad to hear that the men responsible for so. doing had been caught and punished,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.