Aprit 26, Recent experience suggests that the new Shanghai Municipal Council will do well to consider the possibility of recasting or revising the rules of procedure adopted for the Annual General Meeting of Foreign Ratepayers. No-one with any knowledge of ordinary debating practice in deliberative assemblies will consider that the discussion of the various resolutions tabled at that meeting did justice either to the respective motions or to the Council itself. It was obvious that the meeting, after seven o'clock, was torn between two desires—to thrash out. the telephone issue properly and fairly, and to get away for the fulfilment'of other and, possibly, no less pressing engagements, In such circumstances it would have been appropriate to have moved an adjournment to the next day, but, as things are, it is permissible to doubt whether the Ratepayers would have been able in the same strength to have taken advantage of the further opportunity or whether the Council's administration could fave made the necessary arrange-Jments. Yet it was clear that the
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