The Poet-Laureate The death of the Pact-Laureate calls attention to an office, the exact origin of which does not appear be known, at least auch authority as Selden was unable to trace it. Warton, in his History of English Poetry, states that in the: reign of Henry TIE there wai versificator regis to whom an annual stipend of £100 was paid. Chaucer, on his return from abroad, assumed the title of poet-laureate and in' 1989 he obtained a grant of an. annual allowance of wine from Richard If. James 1, in 1615, granted to his laureate, Samuel Daniel, a yearly pension of one hundred marks, but fifteen years Luter under Charles 1, Ben Jenson, the man who is minster Abbey standing, had_ his] remuneration increased to £100] with the addition of "one tierce of Canary Spanish wine to be taken'
he King's. store of wine yearly." Tt is believed that it was upon' the appointment of Southey that the tierce of Canary wine was, commuted for £27 which shows that tages for themselves at the ex: pense-of the labourers." The message concludes with a list of the Kuomintang's claims for the elevation of China's status in the family of nations:
"The Kuomintang has always championed the cause of the op: pressed people. It Rome deste, otsbe ik, reorganized and readjusted taxa tion and promoted the use of native products."
Only if the workers will ardently ce-operate with the Kuomintang, can China be saved "front the "woes of militarism and some poets are nct quite as impractical as some would have us believe, The office nearly came to a sudden end on the death of] Warton, in 1790, when Gibbon recommended its abolition, in an} elegant compliment, still more force onthe death the best time for office, when the prince is a man of virtue and the just departed The Price of Gasoline Reference is made on our motoring page to the recently announced increase in the price of gasoline, This question of the price of spirit Fas always been 2 sore one in Shanghai, one to which we have referred on many occasions in past years. Consequently while we accept the reason given that the fal exchange is responsible for this!
increase in the price of motor spirit, we regard with dismay the rumour that there is a danger of further addition being made to the ost in the comparatively near jure. On that subject, possibly the all companies concerned may Feel disposed to set our anxiety at rest. We are informed that the prices quoted for gasoline in the United States do not preclude the possibility of meeting the fall exchange with a charge somewhat Jens than has now been announced is difteult to forget that, until Monigsberg & Ca. about two years '8go courageously took upon them ives to enter into competition on subject of gasoline prices, motorists in Shanghai were com:
idled to pay around $1 per gallon, when prices in the United States, despite the arguments that wer ly, did not appear to We understand that the feudalism and from the expl ation and oppression of imprrism and Communism."
The only possible answer. to} these assertions is that they are simply not true. The treaties have no more to do with the civil wars and_ lawlessness which keep China "bowed down by poverty and weakness" than the new planet Icarus. foreign capitalist oppresses China or is likely to; and all the policy of the Powers in recent years proves that they neither think of nor treat China ass Hlonigsberg was not sufficient to show cause for a continuance of the experiment, especially when thole competitors followed suit with spectacular reduction on their own) tobe ex-then set. On the other in difficult. to believe that the oil companies have} not Shanghai's best interests at heart, for the higher the coat of running, the fewer cars will be sold, and, consequently, some arrest in the development of our pressing vassal. We would not question the good intentions of the Kuomintang in the matter of fostering native industry and reducing taxation, But, no doubt owing to the obstruction Nanking has met with in making its wishes effective, all industry and the export trade in particular languish under the rap: of innumerable provincial tax bureaux, and the present abnormal price of rice, the predomiaant cause of prevailing Labour unrest, is largely due to the heavy imposts that are levied on grain in movement. Herein, and not through any foreign wickedness—except Moscow's—is explanation of the Communists' activity y Message is nother example of letting not the right hand Nanking know what her lect] hand docth. We may be perfectly sure that General Chians Kai-shek, whose recent speci have shown such clear insight into the true causes of disarray in China, and other Ministers whose names are generally familiar, would never approve such a statement. It is probable that almost any respon-' sible member of the Party Head quarters, if individually chal-Ienged, would express disapproval of it. Yet somehow it is sued. As we said, most re-grottable. The message should not, perhsips, be taken too s ously. But we hope there will be no more of such statements, which cannot fail to create bad feeling and hurt the relationships of China and her nei hours.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.