If statesmen now seeking to] grapple with—world-problems and to get up barriers against the flood of economic disaster could accompany that inspection partly up the Yangtze, they might be inspired by the parable which that mighty river embodies. The Yangtze, tumbling swiftly from about 13,000 in Tibet and wriggling for the rest of its 8,000 mile urge to the China Sea, is more than a giant. It is an age-less spirit of natural force. It succour and chastises; Serves and command: lises and devastates. Man, living on, by and with the Yangtze may seek to curb or direct its course. The Yangtze lazily _lister yields when it likes and, ther suddenly will assert itself. flow where I flow" it might be heard to say.
So, when bri ling activity fringes its banks with dykes, when calculations endeavour to forecast the labour required to keep it within bounds, the Yangtze gives a seraphic wink to. the mountains and the! skies, tolevantly blesses the enterprise and reserves to itself the lit to vary the plan at will and at a suitable season. This known by the engineers who serve the people of the valley by building dykes and. otherwise grooming the river. There Ww that flood of 1931. Just near Hankow.a_ railway " embankment] stood at 61 feet. That seemed age enough. The Yangtze, swollih by abnornial" rains, calmly rose to 68 feet 72 inches and duly, showed Hankow that dykes had their limitations. For it is not only by dykes that the requirements of a mighty river are met. There are nature's relief drainage lakes. Tf dykes were built up the Yangtze in a positive mammoth display of cement, beyond the'Wreams of the most, ambitious engineer or cement-merchant, the river would still insist on its right of self-determination. Its bed might be raised dangerously above the level of the country on each side. Tt might mock at the cement walls by slipping round the corner at: some convenient place to create behind the dykes another lake of its own selection.
Dyke-building, on the lines now being viewed by this special correspondent, is sound. When it' is designed to protect great urban areas or important s._of cultivation it is-wisely taken in hand. But scope must be left for the river to.give vent to its occasional" exuberances, when the snows on the hills are specially yielding to the summer sun. or when the rains come down with greater profusion than usual. And, as the fiifmers know, the] floods, if not too devastatingly out of the course, can be beneficial in fertilising land anew, besides raising the soil. Nor should it be forgotten that a river year in and year out, day after day, is living its own life. It is bringing down from the mountains not only melted snow but debris from'
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.