This week ratepayers in the ex-Russian Concession of Hankow are beimg asked to vote Tls. 200,000 for new municipal buildings there, which apparently will also include a theatre, but judging by remarks our Hankow contemporary thera there is grave doubt as to the advisability of spending so large sum of money. Of course, Hankow knows its own affairs much better than we can hope to do, but it the case of Shanghai. So far as we remember our present municipal building cost four or five million taels (including the site), and it is tone too big for the needs of the present day. And if Shanghai goes on developing industrially and otherwise as it has been doing in the past, at no very distant date these premises will no doubt be overcrowded. Hankow is also liable to a very considerabl> development sooner or later, and looking at the case of Shanghai, it would seem to be good policy to be on the safe side in estimating municipal requirements. For Tls. 200,000 no particularly extensive building is likely to be obtained, unless labour and materials ere very much cheaper than in Shanghai, and even for so much smaller a place like the Russian Concession we should not imagine that the sum is excessive. A great many places in China suffer today because nobody was able to foresee the developments that were to taka place, and so far as cam be seen they will always suffer. So when a chance occurs to-take a big view of things there ought to be every encouragement to do it.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.