London is having a boom in marriages and births, according to Dr. Hamer, the County Medical Officer of Health.
During 1919, 50,222 marriages were celebrated in London, a greater number than in any previous year except 1915. Though births "numbered 82,525, as compared with 70,976 in 1918, and a yearly average of 110,951 before the war, in the last weeks of the year they were being registered at a rate in excess of all previous records. This improvement has been maintained in the first quarter of the present year, with 36,303 registered.
The infantile mortality rate fell to 85 per 1,000, the lowest figure on record, the previous best being 91 per 1,000 in_1912.
Though Dr. Hamer estimates the population in the middle of last year as 80,000 less than in 1914, London is rapidly making up leeway. The serious scarcity of house room he attributes to the record number of war marriages, Tue Government-General of Korea has suspended: publication of the "Chosen Nippo" indefinitely for having published an article in which it said: "This journal, which has been fighting strenuously for the propagation of anti-Japanese ideas, will not be dismayed at the foolish oppression of the Government-General." The Chosen Nippo" is a daily newspaper published in the Korean script, and since its appearance in March its issues have been suppressed or seized by the authorities on 14 or 15 occasions and its conductors have frequently been summoned by the authorities and given warning to be more moderate in their anti-Japanese crusade.
Someoxe, says a writer in the "Japan Times and Mail; is always taking the joy out of life. In Shanghai Congressman Randall intimated that as good Americans the visiting members of Congress would be offended if offered anything stronger than grape juice as a beverage, with the result that Shanghai went dry for a distance of four fect surrounding every visitor. Having lived down the reputation the Californian Prohibitionist gave them, the Con-pressmen came to Tokio only to be met with a shower of letters from a local organization urging them to refuse to attend any function at which a geisha wight be present and the word has evidently been passed around that no good Con-freeman could even look a samisen in the eye without embarrassment. At any rate, some of the visitor are beginning to doubt if there is any such an animal as a geisha. or whether she has joined the dodo in oblivion. "And to think that one of the things I came to Tokio to see is a geisha!" said one of the travelling statesmen, when he read his uplift letter.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.