Many happy days as a "cub-reporter" were spent in a quaint decaying town in East Anglia whose charter goes back to the Norman Kings. Like Shanghai, it has a long artificial river approach, connect ing. with @ vast. sheet of shallow water, with twisting and constantly changing channels which must be threaded before the open sea is renched. In every circumstance like Shanghai. The parelld continues, because a skilled pilot is essential, but there is the difference that over: there it is compulsory for a ship to be handled by a qualified pilot within the port limits: here it is ealy advisable, not necessarily: compulsory. "The mind goes back to many a stormy meeting of the Town Council, the Board of Guardia and the Conservancy Board, on each of which sat the same members—a rabid Socialist Scottish exile (a tailor), the lord of the manor (a rower), a parson or two, necessaritwo lawyers: of opposite political opinions, a cockle-boiler, a marine store-dealer, a grocer,' retired ship's captain who dealt in coal to keep himself occupied and his daughters in. pretty dresses, and other interesting characters. Of course, amongst them were several of the famous old no-surrender, Britain first, foremost, and all th time enthusiasts, and one of their pet subjects was the disgraceful fact that a seaman of any nationality could sit for a Board of Trade examination as a local pilot. Try they would they never could alter that fact, and have not to this day. German,' Dutch, Scandinavian, French,' and other skippers took out pilotage certificates, piloted their own boats in, and so saved the fees. Did the British Government worry about its sovereign rights in pilotage? Not a bit of it Any man who could prove his com-potence was given his certificate. Now, if Chinese seck, as they well may, to be pilots in the Whangpoo and' the Yangtze, cannot they. qualify on their own and look out for their own business, without constantly harping on a breach of "sovereign rights" because foreign pilots are employed on foreign ships?
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.