This Freedom The bestowal of civic _honours upon General Chiang Kai-Shek by Chinkiang in the form of the freedom of that city is replete with tevest. To proffer so mighty a conjqueror that to which he may help' himself according to his whim of the moment, is something of an anomaly, Not only this, but precisely what is this "freedom" worth? While it does not yet apply in the ease of Chinkiang, the procedure savours of presenting the devasta-_ for with all that remains of wreck jeé aspirations and thwarted civie endeavour. With what ease does, one visualize some erstwhile peacefal town whose inhabitants" were irrevocably committed to the pring)! jeiple of "live and let live," now ravaged by war, its surviving' citizens creeping forth from the smoking ruins in the hope of appleasing the despoiler with an offer of "the freedom of the city!" How swiftly the picture recalls that, choicest of Captain Bairnsfather's immortal caricatures of the war, the one in which Old Bill is stationed before the fragment of a wall from which depends, by a single hinge, a decrepit door." Naught else remains ct the shell-ridden village, and you. remember how "Alf" creeps through this aperture only to have Old Bill snarl at him, "Shut that blinking' door!" Fancy' receiving the "free Com' of a habitation like this, and. Jone grasps our theme. An inscrutable Providence has willed that the Chinese be devoid of the saving, grace of humour in many important things. Ought we not, therefore, all the more to pray that they may speedily awaken to the realization that comic opera loses its allure off ithe stage?
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.