Dee, 15.
The China Year Book As usual the China Year Book is the best on China of the year. 'Tourists may plague the world with volumes after a fortnight's stay in Shanghai; learned political writers. may' dissertate on weighty subjects; missionaries may seek the soul of China; Chinese propagandists may try to explain. away all that is evident and obvious—but the China Year Book provides a complete, impartial, scholarly account of the story of life and movement in China written by experts who deal in facts. The present is the 12th edition of this encyclopwedia and upholds the tradition and] reputation of its ancestors, form of General Wang Ken's name, is it not possible for one Nanking's Yuans, Coyneils or Commissions to determine once and for ever, even according to' the law of the Medes and Persians, how Chinese names shall appear in foreign languages?
Once upon a tine, it was a simple matter. The family name came first; then the surnames divided bya hyphen. The French and Germans more or less used this form although their spelling was atrocious, according to the precepts of the learned Mr. Wade. Nowadays, however, it is every man for himself. All sorts of; styles are used and-one is as} good as the other. For instance, the casual reader seeing that General Ken Wang had written on the army would naturally address an inquiry to General Ken, which is not as bad as the American headline writers usually put it: "Fo wants more Railways," referring, of course to Mr. Sun Fo.
In the Who's Who Dr. Tyau has three classifications under each name:
1. The name correctly translate ed into mandarin according to Wade; 2. Courtesy name, which is important because this often appears in_ transla Preferred English rendering.
The Chinese contributors to! this issue are export in their fields. Dr. W. H, Wong, who writes on Mines and Mining is Dr. V. K. Ting's successor in the Geological Survey of China, which continues to do a first-class scientific job in spite of wars and revolutions. Dr. OM. 'T. Z, Tyau, assisted by a group of " young men, prepared the chapters on Education, Finance, the Chinese! Government and Who's Who. These chapters represent com-lations of data in various Ministries in Nanking and this year the data of this nature are singularly well prepared. In fact, nowhere else will one find the. facts either with regard to fin. ances or the organization and personnel of the Chinese Government, Dr. Tyau and hia colleagues are to be congratulated on their success in this direction.
The chapters on the Army and Navy are said to have been prepared by General Ken Wang. This must be an inaccuracy, for} there is no such person. The! gentleman in question is General Wang Ken and a very intere ing person he is indeed.
General Wang Ken is the only) one of a group of graduates of the West Point Military Academy who is. still a fight-jing man. So few of China's future military mon have been students at West Point that the five or six of them attracted particular attention. General Wang remains, after several! years, alone on the field of battle. He has not only done staff work but he has served in every eapacity that falls to the Chinese militarist except the Tuchunate. He once even improvised a navy and just before Tang Song-chi started the present fracas, he was appointed managing director of the Lunghai Railway. addition to his military activities, General Wang-ig a singularly good fellow, an excellent Chinese scholar and remarkably well-read]
the literature of the West—English, French, German—appatently anything. In a well-ordered country, he would have moved high up the ladder by now—but here he belongs neither to the Paotingfu, the Japanese trained nor the Whampoa cliques.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.