Nov. 21.
In his brief speech of modest thanks to the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty for the presentation made to him, through Admiral Sir Federie Dreyer, Mr. E. S. Wilkinson demurred to the suggestion that his association with the Union Jack Club had been anything in ready to extend the privilege of association in. the enterprise dear to his heart. He has never importuned others. He has been fortunate in having behind him the financial generosity. of the Shanghai Race Club. The League and he have been able, happily, to command the whole-hearted cooperation of Mr. and Mrs. Horn brook, to whose ten years management of Union Jack Club appreciative reference was made last June by Sir John Brenan, the President of the Navy League in Shanghai. Even these advantages would have been of no avail had not Mr. Wilkinson given to the club that personal service which Jconnot be assessed in material terms. During. the present man-fagement the Club has taken a total of $1,500,000 and. that tran= agement, as already noted, has been unchanged for ten years. Behind that story of competent financial organization—for the (Club works on a profit basis—lies the record of Mr. Wilkinson's hobby which the silver salver and its graceful inscription honoured yesterday.
To British men and women the fighting services are not. remote from the everyday life. There are naval traditions, army traditions and, now, air traditions in families. Some counties will send. more re~ emits to the Royal Navy than others. Yet, especially since the Royal Navy. Therefore the Union Jack Club, which one of Sir Frederic Dreyer's predecessors once described as the finest of its kind in the East, is appropriately absorbing the main energies of the Navy League's Branch here. /Sir John Brenan has many calls fon his time. Those who know him Javer that to no British institution here does he give more wholehearted support than to the Union Jack Club. His tribute to Mr. Wilkinson's services, quoted by Sir Frederic Dreyer yesterday, came therefore from one who is in an exceptional position to know what those services have meant to the immediate objects of their exjercise and to the British community in China generally.
The Navy League does not pretend to have to display extraordinary energy in developing support of its work among the peo ple of Great Britain. The inhabi-fants of those little isles—like Islanders elsewhere—have come to look upon the seaas the most familiar influence in their history jand their lives. It has brought them disaster, invasion and defeat, They have learnt to look upon it jas the inspiration of their national Policies and outlook. No English boy or girl is ever far from. the beach or the sound of the waves, whatever the mood.
But the League knows that, apart from the exhortations of statesmen in
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.