June 28.
CONSIDERING *hat China, apart] from an altogether unavoidable: observance of the International Rules for. Preventing Collisions at Sea, has no national shipping laws of any. description, the! Proportion of casualties' that] occurs to Chinese-owned vessels: is surprisingly small. The great majority of the bigger types of Chinese-owned ships have, of] course, fully qualified foreign deck and engineer officers, and it is undoubtedly this fact that} Keeps the national casualty-list within reasonable bounds. At) the same time, it cannot be denied that many Chinese shipowners show a woeful disregard of even the elementary tenets of ship-operation, by permitting, if not actually encouraging, their vessels to be manned by uncerti-_ floated officers, to run in an overloaded and hence dangerous condition, and generally to constitute a hazardous risk for any underwriter who may care to do business with them, It is ree cognized and appreciated that: the Marine Department of the Chinese Maritime Customs, hampered by the absence of comprehensive regulations regarding shipping matters, does splendid' work in ensuring that. Chine vessels are suitably officered an equipped; but in regard to both overloading and uncertificated officers, many Chinese ships still leave much to be desired.
But where this failing is most marked is on the Upper Yangtze. Ju addition to several instances which we could quote of vessels on this run being controlled by uncertificated officers and en-wineers, there is a glaring in-"stance, brought to dur attention by a ship-master of many yea) experience, of a new Chinese motor vessel, with a man in command who was "little better than. a coolie," leaving Ichang much overloaded and becoming a total Joss on her maiden voyage. We understand.further that. the River Inspector told the owner's agent to have some cargo removed before the vessel sailed, but his suggestion—for it seems he has little power to order—'w\! completely ignored. We do!
know whether the ship in dug tion was fully insured, but if sh was, the underwriters concerned were against a bad proposition irom the beginning.
The Upper Yangtze is acknowledged to be one of the most difficult stretches qf water in the verid which has to be navigated large and high-powered vessels; and in view of the dearth of skilled and efficient engineering establishments _in that part of China, necessitating any repairs on a large scale being done at Shanghai, it is doubly 5 that' Upper River ships should not only be provided with officers and engineers 1s the necessary Qualifications, but that there should be no overloading under any circumstances. When it is remembered that most of the The strain of such tropical con tions on the nervous system is great, fand unless. guarded against with wisdom and care may lead to sezioos Consequences. The Heat and ium ity and the glare of the stu cause an excessive stimulation of the high-nerve centres by sensations of discomfort from all parts of the body, land. the result ig congestion and fatigue of the brain, with consequent loss of memory (tropical amnesia), mental confusion and dullness, irritability, sometimes leading to "tropical fury," depression and nervous breakdown.
The item, "tropical fury," is of} particular interest to the layman. To what does the category refer? Are the symptoms evidenced by} a general desire to chop. off heads, to suppress foreign journalists who waste hard-won holidays by writing critical books, or is it a contentiousness of spirit such for instance, the insistence upon some obscure] doctrinal point which was developed by some nauseous mind at the end of the Middle Ages, when art ceased to intrigue the intellectual and his mind rushed] into conundrums? Or perhaps! the tropical fury is a rin disease picked up while playing) that mysterious art, mah jong.
One sometimes wonders when ther mah jong was not invented] in China's great past by some! clairvoyant soul in the hope that one day the foreigner and his) wife would come to China and) would be captivated, poisoned) and destroyed by the sparrows. For the game is undoubtedly a "dope," like opium or morphia or} the Charleston and all the other, nostrums for the Morons, the! impediments to thinking, the time wasting, noise producing devices conceived to consume time and to keep the mind from thinking. For there are some human beings who simply dread be left alone by themselves, who dare not spend a day in the country alone or before a fireplace with a book, lest that) curious organism, the mind, should bring them a thought or, 'a memory or an idea. Perhaps} the thinking will drive them to conclusions which they do not} want to believe might be correct; perhaps it might point to them that their ancient ideas and unjcouth mannerisms, their pndeveloped mores are in need of correction; perhaps they might, find that opinions long held and often argued over are false, as false as the masks now-a-days) assumed by the stylish—masks of inanity, of lack of animation, of dullness and insipidity, the) sort of thing Americans in their untrammelled slang have termed but which might) spelt with equal correctness lump belles."
This "tropical fury" shows itself at the movies during the summer months, when pictures which are quiet and sentimental and teach a simple lesson, close to the heart, are described by ladies as "horribly stupid." One watched the audience at "Abraham Lincoln," so many of whom thought the action too slow, as though Lincoln rushed through! life lassooing folk after the fashion of Bill Hart or jumping' from cornice to cliff like a Fairbanks. Then there was vessels on this service are equipped with engines of from 900 to 2,000 i.h.p., that many of them carry from 200 to 600 passengers, any owner-of a ship epraoad 0} Spey oan' a3nos BIT} adequately for his ship's safety is committing an offence which, while carrying no legal consequences in China, would render him criminally responsible in most other countries,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.