The American Community has wisely decided to nominate a missionary to serve on the Shanghai Municipal Council along with the business men. It is not the function of this part of the "Sunday Daily News, canvass for members of ' the Shanghai Municipal Council, bub the American Community is make ing so definite und start Ying a departure in the nomina ation of Dr. Charles E. Patton of the American Presbyt ian Mission, that a word in expl ation is necessary.
No one can understand what happens in the Council nutes: he is a member of it, because of the complex and secretive processes at work in that body. The result ix that Shanghai has a very bad name and the Councit is wholly misunderstood.
Ar, Fessenden not gone to Kyotlg®) and explained the Council the delegates assembled there, the would have left the Far ist with an exceedingly oblique View of the Council and its doings. Ail this harms the foreigners here, lessens the usefulness of the Council and is of no service to the Chinese residents of Shanghai, Even the Chinese councillors, since they have served on the Council, realize what that body does to serve them as they had never done before. In a word, the Council does infinite mischief to itself by not giving full publicity to its work.
The missionary body has, in particular, not always realized what Shanghai means, Certai their prinefpals in the Un States have never had direct, accurate information, firstly, cause the Council never provi ed it until. the game was fully: played and secondly,. because they had no representative on the Council. Although they have vast interest here, those interests were not directly represented on the Council. They were, on the whole, " body apart. Tt is the hope of the American Community that by making room for mis sionary representation on the Councit, the work of the Council vill be brought more closely to the missionary public here and in the United States. On the other hand, they feel that Dr. Patton is an especially capable executive officer, who manages very large mission himself and who has performed a tremendously important service to the American public here by his work in reconciling the Amert-, can missionary and business-,, man,., ear Big? hes
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.