May is a month in which many affect to cast off the dreariness of the early part of the year. They even see in it the occasion for a complete change of occupation. That is why football posts disappear and cricket secretaries begin to sce whether the season jean be faced with the minimum purchase of new equipment and with the maximum collection of subscrip us. Queens of the May, if Tennyson can still be believed, look upon this very day jas the best of the whole 366 (Leap Year is not forgotten). Those serious organisations, which discuss all the moral ills that flesh is heir to, hold their annual oratorical orgies. That modern infliction, the intellectual jor semi-intellectual proletariat, stages a demonstration or two jand waves a red flag. Altogether the notion that May ushers in an ability to begin all over again is sedulously encouraged. Whether that is why fashionable brides eschew the month for weddings cannot be accurately determined. Some people cannot avoid getting married in May. They appear to neither more nor less successful than. their compeers. who succumb to the same disease in other months.
Shanghai may wish that May this year will bring special blessings. There is no harm in the thought, even if it be born from a poignant sense of unmerited misfortune and has little more substance in it. Here ig easy to look upon May as a month of mystery. Following it fare other months, in which, judging by the recent past, so much thas often happened. Taking 1931 {into account, it would seem that the events Which determined the foaneful character of that year were hardly to be discerned twelve months ago. Perhaps it is when May is past that pent-up forces, for good or evil, get a release. So if 1982 is to redeem the reputation assigned to it at midnight on December 31, last, it may be that this month will be the turning point. Certainly it would be dificult for the preceding months to claim that they had been negligent in providing disaster and anxiety.
Of course it is quite possible argue that, in such a tense situation is the whole of the Jworld, no cheerful outlook is excusable. The optimist may lyery properly be regarded as a criminal of the deepest dye. On the other hand the champion of May can contend that the trouble lies not in the multiplicity of impossible situations but in the universality of knowledge of them. In the past there was no
jot information the Geneva to be a cath 1g house activities of the Shanghai Municipal Council. Now, it be surmised, proceedings in Kiangsi|*, asked to be seriously exercised—for two minutes" preceding the showing of. the latest sex-problem as portrayed by Hollywood's newest "star"—over the chances of a silver shortage in 'Nevada and its effect on Mr. Will Rogers' candidature for the Presidency of the United States lof America, it is impossible for even the most modest crisis to hide its diminished he:
That is the It is not that the crises are real consolation. more terrible. It is not that the world is any the whit more troublous than it ever has been. It is simply because more people know about it. Yet those very people will behave just as their ancestors did. They will be bora, get married (not in May if some of them can help it) hi children (in spite of the regis-trans' warnings and the issue of lcatchpenny books on the Zolly of jehud-manufacture) and die. They will assist the process by aking arrangements for earning their own living, having holidays. and, perhaps, saving for a leisured old age. They may be disturbed by financial landslides which melt capital as the midday sun dissolves snowflakes. International uph may make them gasp for bre they read about them in the Jdaily Press. Somehow or other they will stick to routine, The holiday in summer tue, the periodical consultation, with the doctor, the regular libation to the spirit of goodwill must find due place in the personal jealendar, How jis the human able thus to shelter im this mighty tempest lof cataclysmic forces? It surely because he manages to create machines which, in effect, hold those forces in' play while he proceeds as if nothing very much was happening. If he what the communicating or index machine says—that is, the daily newspaper or the monthly review—and believes it all, he should be convinced that he is jon the edge of inevitable chaos. With the sublimity of childlike innocence, he believes that this is merely a matter for the machines and not for him, their putative creator. So he arranges jo four at tennis, a foursome at golf, a deal on the stock exchange, a shooting trip or a holiday on the river, That not pure defiance of the lightning. It is the practical way of treating the titanesque. It is as if the riding of whirlwinds were left to those curious folk who flit' about the world from London to New York from New York to Minneapolis and then to Geneva, while the rest of humanity content themsel with surf-bathing at Margate or Honolulu, It would be impossible to think pleasantly in April. May m of a. different com. plexion. It arouses all these jin the less crowded state of the various places of recreation. May seems to usher in good Yesolutions as vigorously as January did. Governments are going to stabilize themselves or other people. Reformers are to have their way. Sinners will: repent. Recriminations will be scattered before the golden: beams of the sunshine of the month. Bears will gambol with bulls playfully.in those sylvan_ retreats known as exchanges. Politicians, diplomats, negotia tors and dictators will all be' merged in one glorious fraternity of goodfellowship. But will, or may, it be so? "Ne'er cast clout till May be out"—so runs the saw. Let not too much be expected of this month with the names, shortest and most feminine of"
But even of May the doggerel Poet has nonsense to unfold:—
Like the Dollar' and 'Tae, 'Do we' gambol, old dest,
For gallon of ale?"
Sala the Bear to the Bull:
doubt mach i¢ you'd pull The beervengine. enough eect oat the good ut, Although trade's mot go brisk." So the Bull and the Bear inked their hands then and thera And both plunged very di the Cateutia Sweep—Gr the Dublin perhaps
Wil they win, do you (hey. were very nice: chaps) Welt 1 eeftain they But they won't really kno Until June's on the Which' shows the Had. better For neither Although very. old dea (That's: an imperfect rhyme, You must note it this time) Cannot. be lambie. quite Or, een, lambently, white, Bui, like Queens of the May They rise early" to-day. And their language, though terse, Aing as bad as this verso—Wile accordingly ends To prevent loss of friends,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.