The following are the essential parts of the statement made by the Chinese General Chamber of Commerce of Shanghai at the Friday afternoon session of the Conference of the Association of British Chambers of Commerce when the resolutions on Disorder in China and China's Copper Currency were discussed.
As there was no delegation from the Chamber, the statement was read before the Conference on behalf of the Chamber by its Foreign Secretary, Mr. Francis Zia. In the course of it he said I am instructed to express the Chamber's regret that it has found it advisable to send no delegation to the Conference because it has already on repeated occasions in the past been dealing with the two subjects to be discussed, IMPORTATION OF ARMS, Our Chamber has recently inaugurated an energetic movement ier the purpose of effecting the cur-tuiiment of the army. By reducing the army, the wastage of national expenditure will in a large way be avoided. With this aim in view we have appealed through the various foreign Chambers of Commerce at Shanghai to the Friendly Powers, soliciting their assistance in forbidding rigidly the importation into China of munitions and weapons of war; and, on the whole, the replies received were in the nature of emphatic assurances that our appeal hag been sympathetically considered and warmly supported.
But in order that this movement may meet with the success which it eminently deserves, it is absolutely essential for our foreign friends in China to de their very utmost to prevent, so far as-it lies in their power, the importation of arms and weapons of war of every description. In the past instances have net been wanting revealing the re grottable incompleteness of this particular kind of cooperation. However, with the wholehearted cooperation of foreign merchants striving vigorously to bring their army-reduction movement to a successful issue, the object of the movement will at no distant date become an accomplished fact, and with this will be eliminated the main cause of disorder in the country.
As to that part of the proposed resolution re Disorder in China where it says that "it seriously pre-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.