Mar. 27.
Tue interest of the annual meeting of the British Chamber of Commerce was, as the chairman intimated, lessened by the recent date of the Associated Chambers' Conference, but increased by the opportunity it gave to explain what has occasioned so much comment in connexion with that conference. As, we think, the Committee of the British Chamber must be aware, that comment was by no means confined to this newspaper. A very considerable number of the Chamber's members dissented from the surtax' resolution and continue to dissent. Furthermore, may we reply to that charge of ''irresponsibility as touching the criticisms in these columns, which appears two or three times in the chairman's speech? Now it is of course obvious that a newspaper has neither bales of piece-goods nor cases of railway material to sell, and to this extent may be called irresponsible. But its existence depends wholly on the ability of other people to sell piece-goods and railway plant, so that its responsibility is there just the same. Moreover, although it may feel no responsibility towards the British Chamber of Commerce Committee in this particular instance, it may be conscious of great responsibility to many of the members, not to mention numbers of other people. And lastly it cannot fairly be suggested, we'think, that the North-China Daily News," which has endeavoured to represent British thought in China for a good many decades, would join issue with the leading British business institution just for the fun of the thing and without careful reflexion on the course it was taking.
Controversies can be prolonged while either side has breath to spare and we have no intention of going again over all the ground already explored in connexion with Washington's regrettable @ecision to grant Peking the surtax under certain conditions. But when Mr. Burkill explains that the Committee of the Chamber felt that it was useless to advise in a manner contrary to what nine Governments had agreed, one cannot help thinking that the utter and conspicuous failure of Peking to measure.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.