GOOD attendance was recorded at the Annual General meeting of the Hankow British Chamber of Commerce held on March 23 at 3.30 p.m. in the Chamber's offices in the Hongkong & Shanghai Bank Building Hankow.
The undeclared war which has been raging in this country for the past six months has established conditions different from any previously experienced and which have had their reaction on every branch of commerce and industry. The Chairman's annual report in these circumstances, therefore, was looked forward to by members with considerable interest and none was disappointed, for Mr. A. E. Marker's speech was very comprehensive and left no item of interest uncovered.
Marker said:
"Before we proceed with the business before the meeting, I should like to welcome our guests.
I believe this to be the first occasion on record that we have the privilege of welcoming at our Annual Meeting a Counsellor of the Embassy, in the person of Mr. D. MacKillop. Whilst we regret the circumstances which have made you a temporary resident of Hankow, we are privileged to have you among us and we thank you particularly for attending on this occasion.
In Mr, Moss and, more recently, in Mr. Whitamore, we have great pleasure in welcoming trusted coun-Sellars one or both of whom invariably make time to attend our regular Committee meetings.
Admiral Holt is, relatively speaking, a newcomer and this is the first occasion on which we are able to welcome him at one of these meetings. We thank you, Gentlemen, for sparing us the time to attend.
We meet here to-day in the throes of the greatest crisis witnessed in China during living memory, a crisis comparable in magnitude ' and its possible consequences with the great Crises which, as history records, have convulsed this nation periodically throughout the ages. For us, immersed as we are in the crisis and liable to be overwhelmed by its consequences, to attempt to report in a matter-of-fact manner on the trade of the past year and on our jactivities is a difficult and, I fear, uninspiring task. For, a fair and representative trade report should be predominantly a report on the activities of the first seven months, but that period has been so over shadowed by subsequent events that it has become dimly distant and, one might almost say, unreal.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.