News is to hand that the Rev. J.
Bruce, m.a., of the English Baptist Mission, former President of the Shantung Christian University, has gained the London University Doctorate of Literature for a thesis on the philosophy of Chu si, the great commentator on the Chinese Classics. _Dr. Bruce was almost the first, if not the first, to gain the London M. A. degree in Chinese. For 15 years, in such spare time as a strenuous teaching and administrative career has left him, Dr. Rruce has patiently pursued his investigations into the thought of Chu Hi. Starting, as most Western readers do, with the idea that Chu Hsi was a clear-cut materialist and therefore mainly responsible for what is by many considered the non-theistic, materialistic trend of what may be termed the orthodox interpretation of the Classics, Dr. Bruce has, as the result of long first-hand study, come to admire Chu Hi as an out-and-out idealist, whose basis of interpretation is essentially spiritual.
Messrs. Probsthain. of London are shortly bringing out a work by Dr. Bruce in three volumes. Two of these volumes are taken up with Dr. Bruce's translation of and notes on certain works of the Chinese philosopher, the third volume is his estimate of Chu Hsi's philosovhv. This third volume is practically the thesis for the doctopste., The few people in Peking and north China who have seen the work in manuscript can speak of remarkable insight and freshness, as well.as of the sustained, patient and scholarly investigation which characterizes it.
Dr. Bruce is one of the feeding sources of quite a number of pone in tale country vid are teaching psychology, _phillosophy and theology in Mandarin, -his proof-sheets being used, in their rough. form, by teachers who cannot wait for the works to appear in their finished state. Dr. Bruce is to be congratulated on a very soleusly guarded, seldom conferved, distinction.
Tokio, May 11.—Japan has agreed to accept and recognize certificates from the American Bureau of Shipping regarding load-lines of American ships.—Reuter.-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.