Year's day an interesting but seldom witnessed act took place the War Memorial. About eight) o'clock a Chinese dressed in long] fgown and bearing in his hands a bunch of flowers approached the Memorial, and bowing reverently placed them above the tablet of names. Again bowing he produced 'a red candle which he affixed to the' topmost step, and after lighting it took his departure as quietly and nostentatiously as he had come, very few people indeed having noted his presence. There was no card on the flowers, which were arum lilies, and absolutely nothing identify who the donor was, and all that could be surmised by one observing the scene was that he appeared to be of the house-boy class. If this is correct and also the further theory that he was paying his) tribute to a former employer who had fallen in the war, the action stands out in a more gracious and kindly light even thun had it been a relative for whom he was mourn-
{those already existing in Hongkong. Possibly the Governor has in mind something like the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, which did actually get training once a year aboard men-of-war, and which afterwards went to form the Naval Division of the Army during the war, and that would probably prove a very popular element among the Volunteers there. Furthermore in ithe territorial waters of the colony these men in time of trouble would probably be able to assist in the necessary patrol work in smaller, craft which any crisis would inevitably redouble. It is true that our Maritime Ca. here, brought _into being for an object slightly similar, is now defunct, but there were difficulties in its way which will not be encountered in Hongkong with fits one definite authority in harbour matters, and there is no reason why the changed conditions there should not make it a success.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.