I should also like, Gentlemen, with your permission, to try if T can to amplify a thought which I think was contained in the Chairman's concluding remarks. He said, and I~ am, sure we all agree with him, that was a legitimate activity for any, friend of Chinato help towards making China a state. Now the position, as I see it, has not been any' lack of friends prepared to offer that help. It has been the reluctance of Chinese in authority to accept it. It the object of this Association, "as the Chairman told you, to protect and to promote commercial interests! of the British Empire in the Far' East. It is unavoidable that in our endeavours to achieve that object we should criticize things that are done China by those in authority, "and things proposed to be done by' thi im authority in China, We have done it in the past and we are going to do it in the future. It is out job. But a continual stream of criticism is, I think, rather apt to give a wrong impression, the impression that we give no credit to the Chinese Government for its good inten-_ Nous and for its achievements. 1 don't believe that that isa correct impression, but, so far as it gets, about, andi am told that it does get bout, T think it adds to the reluctance of the Chinese to accept Bri-{ish help. One naturally is more ready to accept help from people who appear friendly than from people who appear merely critical. I beeve, therefore, that it was a very happy thought' on the part of our Chairman to express the gratification that this Association feels at what has already been achieved in China and T think, further, that it might be a wise thing for' it to become known in China that that gratifieation was expressed on this important annual occasion. I think that the) moment is opportune for it.
The Chairman has referred to the ballan d'essal that has recently been thrown out by Japan. I do not think that it will be likely make other foreigners less ready to offer help to China, or the Chinese people less reluctant to accept it. And I feel, therefore, that if a word of encouragement (not by any ma ner of means to be given patronisingly) were to go out at the present time, it would be a very good thing." (applause).
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.