A contribution to today's correspondence columns affords an opportunity, and especially now that the Municipal Council is in recess, to refer to the work it has done during the year since the China Incident commenced in July, 1937. That affair in north China did not immediately concern Shanghai, and it was hoped that the Sino-Japanese struggle would be localized where it had commenced, but it was speedily seen that this was not to be, and, within a month of the original outbreak, Shanghai was on the eve of itself being involved. There commenced a period of great anxiety and activity on the part of members of the Council, and the burdens which were thrown upon them, the decisions which they had to make on the quickest notice, and the amount of individual attention they had to give to their responsibilities as representatives of the community made demands upon their time, which, great as they were, were met with all-round loyalty. It is not possible to agree with everything the Council did, during those difficult times. They would have been more than human if they had succeeded in making no mistakes, for the magnitude of the crisis as compared with any that preceded it, presented its concomitant problems on a scale which had never before been experienced. Mistakes were made occasionally, but, taking the year as a whole, they were few, where they might have been more without any real ground for serious criticism, while in the main the problems posed for solution were as quickly and as efficiently dealt with as the exigences of the situation permitted. It is to their guiding efforts that Shanghai came through its travail so well as it has done, to their foresight, and the foresight of their predecessors, that schemes for the mobilization of available talent to meet the new requirements worked so smoothly and so sucessfully. Open to criticism as the form of municipal government in Shanghai may be, its defenders may rightfully claim that it has completely vindicated itself, for it is difficult to conceive how any other form of administration could have done any better, whether allowances are, or are not to be made for the prevailing circumstances, The devotion of the individual members to their voluntarily, assumed duties is best witn ed by the fact a that at the height of the crisis council meetings were held as frequently as at, least once a day and sometimes even that did not end the calls upon councillors' time.
But this article, which is only designed to deal with the Municipal Service, would not be complete without reference to the Council's staff, again not in complete detail, but in a general survey. The very first days of the hostilities threw upon the essential services an enormous strain. The ghastly tragedies from accidental bombing made demands upon such services as the Police, Public Health and Public Works Departments as had never been made before, and it is a standing testimony to their efficiency that the results of these catastrophes were so speedily dealt with. In that fact probably is to be found the cause for the maintenance of the community's morale in the face of a danger—so forcibly brought home to them—that they had never encountered before nor could ever have expected. The manner in which the Police carried out their duties under the gravest danger north of the Soochow Creek, is already a matter of common knowledge. What is most appreciated is the loyalty with which the force, suffering under a sense of grievance over the pay cuts of only a short while before, rose to the occasion, and the manner in which during the long months subsequently they have carried on in a manner worthy of the highest tradition, The Volunteers must here not be overlooked, for they demonstrated ey the manner in which they responded to the call to duty, and the way la which they undertook the maintenance of dangerous posts, characteristics which have been so often displayed that Shanghai is likely sometimes to take for granted wi ally a very fine, consistent exhibition of esprit de corps. The importance of the Volunteers and the Police Force, including the Specials, to the community of Shanghai has never before so clearly demonstrated, and until the arrival of reinforcements for the Shanghai Defence Force, it is very clear that they made a most valuable contribution to the safety of the population of the International Settlement, swelled as it was by hundreds of thousands of refugees.
But if the Council, the Police and the Volunteers'had problems of their own to meet, what is to be said of the Public Health and Public Works Departments? These are sections of the Municipal Service which so often are permitted to blush unseen. On both of them the outbreak of fighting in this area had immediate effects. The huge influx of refugees made big demands upon both services, and, as the months passed, and the. danger of epidemics increased, the efficiency of both services was amply demonstrated. Grave as is the cholera epidemic at the present moment, there is not the slightest doubt that, had it not been for the strenuous and well-directed endeavours of the Public Health Department, the situation would have been considerably worse than it has developed up to the present. When all the contributory factors to a grave state of public health are taken into consideration, and the relatively small amount of interference with daily life, it 1s apparent that it was due to the very great efforts of both of these departments that Shanghai has not suffered more than it has. There will of course be a need for just as great vigilance in the future as is now being shown, but the record of these departments is such that Shanghai may have every confidence in them. It is as well that all these things should be remembered. There is a tendency, undoubtedly dictated by political motives, to seem to decry what has been done by the Municipal Council and its servants, criticism which implies that things would have been so much better had affairs been under the control of the critics; but against this may be offered the reminder that it is not only in Shanghai that cholera is raging, but in many other parts of China, and those not wholly under Chinese domination. There is no reason for encouraging a feeling of smug satisfaction concerning the administration of Shanghai, but, on the very patent evidence of the past year, the record is demonstratively good, and it is to be con-
üdently expected that for the future there will be just the same degree of efficiency as shown in the past. It may be that there is still some time to go before Shanghai regains a state of complete normality, but the efforts of the Municipal Council and its servants have maintained the services intact, and in a state to meet the demands of a future in which there will be much reconstruction with all its attendant problems.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.